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The return of comedy
by Craig Roush
A Kinnopio film writer
Make us laugh, the audiences said, and Hollywood has been doing exactly that.
Far better, in fact, than making them scream. While every thriller to hit the
big screen in the past month has turned out to be a less-than-thrilling charade,
comedies like American Pie, Mystery Men, and the Frank Oz-directed
Bowfinger have concocted great laughs. The latest of these is lightening in
a bottle, pairing two great comic actors under competent direction.
Of course, the Eddie Murphy/Steve Martin/together-for-the-first-time double billing is only a marketing point and not much more. Murphy and Martin have little interaction with each other onscreen, and the key to the comedy lies more within each actor's individual talents than in their ability to work together. But each is just fine -- great, almost -- at the role assigned.
Martin is Bobby Bowfinger, a down-on-his-luck movie producer looking to make it big. He's got a script, but he doesn't have a budget and he doesn't have a star. He can work his way around the first of these problems, but the second proves more formidable. His ideal star, Kit Ramsey (Murphy), is to high on the A-list to even bother with a small-time filmmaker like Bowfinger, and so for the moment, Bobby is s.o.l. But he devises a plan in which he has his actors deliver their lines to Kit while he secretly films the exchanges, giving him enough footage to make his picture.
Bobby's group is comically devoid of any talent whatsoever, which generates a fine humorous base for the movie. From the nymphomaniac actress Daisy (Heather Graham) and the accountant-turned-screenwriter Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle) to the stage crew of illegal immigrants and a wonderful cameo for Robert Downey Jr., there's a lot of subtle talent in the wings to generate the hilarious atmosphere that Bowfinger needs to succeed.
Most of the success, however, comes from Martin's script. It's spot-on perfect for this sort of endeavor: not once is there an extended bout with failure for Bowfinger International Pictures. Everything here is con-artist feel-good, beginning with the way Martin plays his title character and ending with the way everything falls into place by movie's end. There are also numerous references -- mostly unflattering -- to Hollywood itself, thrown in amongst the nonstop witty dialogue.
This is a good turn for both Martin and Murphy, both coming off of unworthy comic outings (Martin from The Out-of-Towners and Murphy from last year's Holy Man). It's also another example of how comedies have outdone the thrillers for the summer of 1999.
Craig Roush, 1999
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