Bowfinger

Rating:
Summary: Sharp, funny satire of Hollywood
Review: It is widely believed that a good comedy is hard to create and that a great one is almost impossible to make. Judging by most of what has been produced in the last decade or so, that may be true. I know, however, that it wasn't always true. From the 1930s through the 1970s, Hollywood released a number of funny movies every year. I don't know what caused the laughter to die down. All I can tell you is that, when a good comedy comes along, you ought to take the opportunity to see it, since it may be months until the next one. Bowfinger is such a movie.

Steve Martin, who also wrote the script, is Bobby Bowfinger, the least successful producer in Tinseltown. He gets a screenplay he thinks is great, but how is he going to finance any project? A studio executive tells him jokingly that if he can get Kitt Ramsey [Eddy Murphy] to play the lead, the studio will finance the movie. Bowfinger takes the offer seriously. When Ramsey throws him out of his limo, Bowfinger is down but not out. He hatches a scheme. Suppose he and his motley crew were to sneak around and film Ramsey secretly? What if Ramsey were to star in a movie and not even know it? Only in Hollywood, I hear you saying.

What follows is an antidote to the cynical, sophomoric or gross-out comedies that have been so prevalent these days. Frankly, some of these were amusing, but Bowfinger is a return to a gentler form of satire. People are made fun of, but there is no meanness to the humor. Bowfinger may be an Everyman in a world of wolves, but he is a well-adjusted one. He always has a plan. The ending proved to be a little too simplistic and upbeat for my tastes, but it does little to ruin the fun.

This is Steve Martin's best comedy work since LA Story in 1991, but it is Eddy Murphy who easily takes the acting honors. He plays both Kitt Ramsey and another character named Jiff. We know Murphy can make people laugh, but as an actor, he in underrated. Bowfinger hires Jiff because he looks so much like Ramsey. Murphy gives them each a unique personality. Ramsey is hyper and totally paranoid, while Jiff is nerdy and not very fast. Each has a different body language, and it is part of Murphy's genius that he can create two characters so physically similar yet different at the same time.

Heather Graham is, as Jiff puts it, awesome. Hers is the role of Daisy, an actress fresh off the bus from Ohio who will sleep with anyone to get what she wants. Graham gives her character a hysterical combination of worldliness and sweetness. Also great is Christine Baraski, of Now and Again, who plays an aging actress who never once acknowledges that her career is on the skids.

If I have any problem with Bowfinger, it is due to director Frank Oz. Many movies today are so long. I looked in the newspaper the other day, and nearly everything playing ran from two to three hours. It's as though studios, which are now run by accountants, accept whatever cut the director hands them these days. Oz has the opposite problem. He cuts his movies to the bone. As a result, there are a couple of spots in Bowfinger where it seems like something has been omitted.

Rating:
Summary: Quite funny, good performances, very plain DVD
Review: I enjoyed this movie - it's a great idea about a sleazy director who follows around a star to get footage for his movie, thereby making it appear that the star is in the film. Steve Martin plays the director, the titular Bowfinger (he also wrote the screenplay). Eddie Murphy is the star, Kit. Both are well suited to play their roles, and their performances are very good, especially Murphy in his second role as the star's less-famous (and less ambitious, less good-looking, less successful, etc.) brother. Kit is in therapy for paranoia, and the strange people following him around, telling him things that make no sense (because it's dialogue for Bowfinger's film) don't help. These scenes are the highlights for me, where Murphy gets a "deer in headlights" look and runs off to his therapist yet again. The film works both as a satire and as slapstick comedy, and I was entertained from beginning to end.

The performances are very good. Martin and Terrance Stamp (the therapist) are always good, but I was pleasantly surprised by Murphy and Heather Graham (as one of the "actors" in the movie). Murphy is much more likeable than usual (probably because he's parodying himself somewhat), and Graham puts in a good performance, much better than I thought her capable of. Christine Baranski is also memorable as another of the actors recruited by Bowfinger.

The DVD edition does not stand out. There are the typical extras, such as a director's commentary from Frank Oz (okay, but I can't help thinking Steve Martin should have been there too), (only) two cut scenes, and a short making-of piece. Overall, not much added on the DVD relative to the tape.

Although I enjoyed the movie and found it entertaining, it's not the type of movie I'd want to see over and over again. Add in the fact that the DVD had few extras, I give it a 3/5. It's probably a little better than that, but not good enough for 4.

Rating:
Summary: Funny in principle - not on the screen.
Review: "Bowfinger" is about a ruse; a ruse so big it results in the production of a movie starring Kit Ramsey, a major movie star - without him ever knowing. Unfortunately, this premise doesn't generate quite as many laughs as it seems capable of: we can't laugh with the characters because they aren't in on the joke, and we can't laugh at them because they are so darn pathetic. The viewer is caught in a cruel limbo, forced to watch deserving, sympathetic people make fools of themselves.

Perhaps I should restate myself: not everybody involved in filming "Chubby Rain" is sympathetic. Bobby Bowfinger, the producer, is too machiavellian to be likeable. He's turning fifty soon, which would apparently bar him from making it big, so he is determined to produce his magnum opus at any cost. His black-and-white view of the world generates a few laughs ("There, there, there's the door," he consoles Daisy who comes in to audition, but can't pay cash), but at times he is too ruthless to be funny.

Daisy steps off the bus with the words "where do I go to be a star?", but she turns out to be neither simple-minded nor naive. Her plan is to sleep her way to the top, and eventually she does get into bed with everyone on the set. That's funny the first few times, but not too funny.

The two people who really deserve better are Jiff, Kit Ramsey's double, and Carol, a lowly actress who's been kept on hold for years. Carol believes wholeheartely in the project, and the viewers are getting ready for the Big Revelation when she'll find out the truth and be devastated (if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch "Galaxy Quest," "A Bug's Life," or "Chicken Run" - they all use this exact plot device).

Jiff has the unenviable job of being Kit's double - meaning that he must play Kit in scenes Bowfinger couldn't possibly shoot with a secret camera. A good example is the scene where Keith Kinkade, the hero of "Chubby Rain," must run across a highway. Bowfinger tells Jiff that the cars are driven by stuntmen, deposits him on one side, sets up the camera, and gives the signal "run!". Jiff runs. Funny in concept - but not on the screen, where the viewer is forced to watch poor Jiff run heroicly across eight lanes of speeding traffic, with tears streaming down his face.

However, a sequence of scenes makes "Bowfinger" very much worth watching, and these are the scenes of the actual filming of "Chubby Rain." Since Bowfinger, with his $2184 budget, obviously can't pay Kit to star in the film, he decides to film him in secret. One thing is on Bowfinger's side - Kit has a mortal fear of aliens, and regularly attends Mind Head sessions to get "re-adjusted". When strangers - Bowfinger's actors - start coming up to him on the street, addressing him as Keith, and telling him that he must save humanity from an alien invasion, Kit is understandably horrified. Carol remarks: "His fear is so real," watching Kit run past in absolute terror.

As a spoof on low-dudget films - and people who make them, "Bowfinger" fails completely. As a comedy, it has a few jewels surrounded by a lot of mediocre footage, but is very much watchable.

Rating:
Summary: Funny Satire of Hollywood
Review: When watching Steve Martin's take on the Hollywood process, I couldn't stop thinking about "The Player", the Robert Altman film with Tim Robbins. It's the same take on the perverse nature of Hollywood, from an obviously different perspective.

Bowfinger is funny. Eddie Murphy is a great caricature of an action film. The barbs pointed at Scientology are as funny as they are obvious (how did Martin not get sued by the paranoid, litigious religion?).

The only complaints are that the film seems to drag at points.

As for the DVD extras, all I can say is that Christine Baranski does not come across as someone I would want to have dinner with. She appears to take herself, her role, and this film FAR too seriously. Perhaps she was remaining in character (unforutunately, I don't think so).

Rating:
Summary: Bowfinger
Review: Very funny film. When independent film producer, Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) thinks he found a Oscar-worthy movie to produce, he sets out to get the biggest action star in Hollywood, Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy). But when Bowfinger shows him the screenplay, he backs out. Now Bobby must convince, not only the camera that Kit is in the movie, but his cast and crew as well.

Great comedy - written by Martin. Has a comedic look to the inner-workings of Hollywood. Also Starring Christine Baranski and Heather Graham.

Rating:
Summary: Pure Comedy
Review: This is such a great comedy. Written by Steve Martin, it's a bit different from some of his other writing efforts like Roxanne and L.A. Story in that they are romantic comedies and Bowfinger really doesn't have any romantic element. It's straight ahead comedy.

Beginning with a great premise (an Ed Wood like director using a star actor in a movie without the actor's knowledge), the movie broadens it's comic potential with an array of great secondary characters all of whom are played brilliantly.

And of course, there is Eddie Murphy who is great. Personally, of the two characters he plays the one I loved was actually the "big movie star" character. He is SO funny as this character. Watching him go to pieces as Bowfinger and his crew find ways to get him into their movie is hilarious.

If you're looking for a movie that is silly and tremendously funny, Bowfinger is perfect. It's a brilliant comedic work.

Rating:
Summary: Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin Work Great Together!
Review: Buy this! It is a really "corny" comedy about Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Matin) who is an infamous director and he tries to get Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) who is a very famous actor to join his movie. How does he get him? Watch it and find out. If you like movies that are really stupid that they make you laugh, then BUY THIS!!!

Rating:
Summary: It's a serious business this being funny...
Review: One of the funniest aspects of this DVD is the commentary by Frank Oz - initially I thought he was hamming it up, pretending to be clueless, deliberately providing inane comments and banal 'insights', but, regrettably, no ham was involved. This guy is earnest, and he takes comedy seriously (hey, he took The Muppets so seriously that he's made himself look like one of them (eat your heart out Robert De Niro)); he's dishonest (or blind) about even his own motivations (listen to him during the Heather Graham/Steve Martin bedroom scene and wince); there seems to be some kind of mutual admiration thing on between him and Steve Martin, and this compounds the problem, because Steve takes comedy extremely seriously too - it's hard work, and its aim appears to be making money and making Steve look clever and, at one level, likeable - trying to be likeable is intrinsically not funny. You end up being about as funny as Tom Hanks. Which brings us to Eddie Murphy, who is absolutely hilarious. He saves the film. He's that good. Most of the great laughs are provided by Eddie ad-libbing (Frank Oz unwittingly, and rather self-defeatingly, reveals this). Why isn't there more of Eddie? Well, it gets back to Frank Oz and Steve Martin - they're trying to do a movie by the numbers, Hollywood 'formula' comedy that would get a tick from script doctors like Robert McKee, so they better spend that time sending those irrelevant minor characters 'on a journey', babbling on about the 'underlying message' of the film (really, I'm not making this up, it's on the commentary) about 'following your dream'. Give us a break. Why not just own up and admit that their 'craft' should be nothing more than a pretext for Eddie to split our sides (...she's the most inventive girl...).

Rating:
Summary: One of the funniest comedies I've seen in a long time
Review: Steve Martin plays Bobby Bowfinger, a movie director with the talent and devotion of the infamous Edward D. Wood Jr. (who made "Plan 9 From Outer Space"). When the Hollywood star Kit Ramsey (Murphy) doesn't want to star in his next (first?) movie, he decides to trick him into star in it.

Steve Martin's screenplay is full of jokes and is also a satire of Hollywood and cults (The Scientology church, maybe). Martin is great in the lead part and Eddie Murphy is very funny in his two roles. The rest of the cast is good too.

This is one of the funniest comedies I have seen in a long time. It's full of laughs and it there's not one boring minute. Everybody who likes comedy should see it!

Rating:
Summary: Bowfinger... The Man with the Midas Bow
Review: Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and Eddie Murphy. Two of America's funniest personalities portraying 3 serious individuals to an hysterical end. Under the keen eye of Director, Frank Oz (Miss Piggy, Yoda, Little Shop... etc.), the film moves from episode to episode with comic flair and freedom for the performers. Hollywood, Cults, Movies and people are parodied. A must see for adult fans of Murphy and Martin. There is some sexual innuendo which may require some addressing to the little uns. The DVD has a fun, intriguing commentary by Frank Oz.