Bowfinger (1999)

My boyfriend is really into Steve Martin, so this was an easy choice to make when deciding what to watch. It is a pretty funny movie, you guys, take it from me. Written by Martin and directed by Frank Oz, Bowfinger tells the underdog tale of Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin), a very small-time producer and director, and his motley crew (hehe I almost spelled that "crue") of filmmakers, including: the supposedly innocent Daisy (Heather Graham), willing to sleep with anyone who beefs up her part, over-dramatic actress Carol (Christine Baranski), camera-man Dave (Jamie Kennedy), a collection of inexperienced day-laborers, and "genius" writer/accountant Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle), who has penned the alien invasion script Chubby Rain.

Bowfinger claims he can land big-time action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) as the lead, attempting to scam his way into the actor's home. Unwilling to admit his failure to the others, he lies and says Kit's on board, but has a weird method acting thing and doesn't want to interact with his costars and will only shoot at odd, specific times. Which basically means they're going to stalk him and film around him, hoping he won't notice. So now Kit, who's part of an ambiguous religious cult called Mind Head (sort of Scientology-ish), is being driven insane by strangers constantly popping up in his life yelling at him about aliens and imaginary sexual relations. Eventually they cast lookalike Jiff (Eddie Murphy) for close-up shots, but really he'd rather just be running errands.

I love movies about making movies, and this is a great parody of the Hollywood system. The concept of a nervous actor unknowingly starring in a movie about aliens and consequently driven to believe he is living the life of his assigned role is pretty out there and seriously amusing. The cast is swell, with silly turns from Heather Graham and Steve Martin, and a standout performance by Christine Baranski, who is sadly under-used here (and in general, it seems). I loved Eddie Murphy's dual role, from paranoid and defensive action star to a socially awkward errand boy with braces. It's like wow, I remember why I liked this guy. But best of all is obviously the fact that Robert "Best Actor Ever" Downey, Jr shows up for a bit. It has been clinically proven that the addition of RDJ to a movie will automatically increase my enjoyment of it, in a percentage correlating to his amount of screen time. So congratulations, Bowfinger, you really know how to gain my patronage.

Bowfinger is quite over the top, but in a good way. It just keeps throwing more ludicrous things at you until the very last scene, in which it reaches new, never-before-seen levels of silliness. And that's cool. It's a very enjoyable movie, but perhaps not the most memorable. I don't feel the desire to watch it over and over or anything. But it's nice to sit down and see a film that you know was such fun to make- it seems to say, "Everyone's just having a good time, so you should too!"

4/5