Bowfinger

Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) is an Ed Wood-like film producer who is on his druthers and struggling to keep his small team of near-defeated colleagues together. One day his Iranian accountant Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle) gives him a script titled "Chubby Rain” about aliens who come to Earth in raindrops and Bowfinger becomes convinced that he at last has a chance of movie greatness.

Written by Martin Bowfinger is one of his better comedies. Not laugh-out-loud but the premise is droll, there are amusingly satirical sideswipes at the industry he knows well (including a running joke about Scientology with Terence Stamp in the L. Ron Hubbard-ish role), and his cast enter into the spirit with gusto, particularly Christine Baranski and Heather Graham, as an Ohio girl who has no problems with sleeping her way to the top. Martin is on form but Eddie Murphy displays a range that we didn’t know he had as both the over-wrought Kit and his witless twin, Jiff. Don’t expect much of Robert Downey Jr. however as he only really appears in one scene opposite Martin

Comedies about delusional characters are fun because they speak sympathetically to the loser in us all. Ben Stiller’s The Cable Guy (1999) and Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983) come immediately to mind. Bowfinger isn’t in the league of those films but Martin and veteran comedy director Frank Oz get the pathos of the situation here just right.

 

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