Amazon.com video review:
Filmmakers often remark that it's just so hard to make a bad picture
that few would take on the challenge if they weren't so naive. Steve
Martin's Bobby Bowfinger is cut from that pattern, one of those sweet,
indomitable operators of Hollywood who seem to be descended directly from
Ed
Wood (of Plan 9 from Outer Space infamy). To resurrect his
ramshackle
existence, Bowfinger opts to film his accountant's sci-fi spectacular,
Chubby Rain, about aliens invading in raindrops. The snag is he
needs
to attach action megastar Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy), an actor so paranoid
he
counts the K's in scripts to uncover possible Ku Klux Klan influences.
When his effort
fails, Bowfinger hits on an ingenious scheme to film Ramsey without his
knowledge, throwing his actors at the hapless star whenever he appears in
public. Only Kit begins to believe he's being hounded by aliens for real,
and runs hysterically to his guru (Terence Stamp) at a Scientology-clone group
called MindHead, where people walk around in fine suits wearing white
pyramids on their heads. Deprived of his star, yet not to be undone,
Bowfinger hires a look-alike, Jiff (also Eddie Murphy), to fill in. The tone
of the picture is sometimes flat, rather than deadpan, but that's
nitpicking. The farce is quick and engrossing, and populated with terrific
performances, especially by Eddie Murphy, whose dual role as Kit and Jiff
showcases his character-building gift, and by Martin, whose Bowfinger, part
con man and part would-be visionary, manages to capture your sympathies. Heather
Graham's would-be actress cheerfully sleeps her way to the top like she
knows she's supposed to, and Christine Baranski plays her shopworn
method actor with myopic self-absorption. --Jim Gay
