Bowfinger (1999)

Rolling Stone
"...Inspired funny business that allows Martin to hilariously torpedo Hollywood's corrupt heart..." 09/02/1999 p.125-6

Sight and Sound
"...Real accuracy and sting come in Robert Downey Jr's brilliant cameo..." 11/??/1999 p.39-40

Movieline's Hollywood Life
"...So smart and biting that we relish it....[Murphy] gives the performance of his life..." 09/01/1999 p.39

Box Office
"...With its highly original, clever and well-paced script, BOWFINGER scams edgy but light-hearted laughs from 'Action!' to wrap..." 09/01/1999 p.150

USA Today
"...This is the funniest Eddie Murphy comedy since the Reagan administration..." 08/13/1999 p.1E

Los Angeles Times
"...People bring out the best in Eddie Murphy: the more of them he plays on screen, the drop-dead funnier he becomes..." 08/13/1999 p.C1

Chicago Sun-Times
"...[Murphy shows] a gift for creating new characters out of familiar materials....Martin is also at the top of his form....BOWFINGER is one of those comedies where everything works..." 08/13/1999 p.31

Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
Bowfinger, written by Martin and directed by Frank Oz (Little Shop of Horrors), understands how deeply people yearn to be in the movies, and how fame can make you peculiar. Like Mel Brooks' The Producers, it's about fringe players who strike out boldly for the big time. The shabby frame house on a dead-end street has a sign outside promoting glorious enterprises ("Bowfinger International Pictures"), but inside everything is debt, desperation and dreams... All these characters are like an accident waiting to happen to Kit Ramsey, hilariously played by Eddie Murphy in his third best comic performance of recent years. The second best was in The Nutty Professor. The best is a second role in this film: As Jiff, a hapless loser hired to be Kit's double, Murphy creates a character of such endearing cluelessness that even in a comedy he generates real affection from the audience. Murphy makes Kit into a loudmouth image-monger with a racial chip on his shoulder... Terrified by the smallest detail of daily living, he has frequent sessions with his Mind Head guru (Terence Stamp), who leads him patiently through reminders of good and bad behavior (one of his problems is too funny for me to spoil with even a hint). But it's as Jiff that Murphy gets his biggest laughs. Here is a man so grateful to be in a film, so disbelieving that he has been singled out for stardom, that he dutifully risks his life to walk across a busy expressway. Murphy shows here, as he did in The Nutty Professor and on Saturday Night Live, a gift for creating new characters out of familiar materials. Yes, Jiff looks like Kit (that's why he got the job as a double), but the person inside is completely fresh and new, and has his own personality and appeal. Although Murphy is not usually referred to as a great actor (and comedians are never taken as seriously as they should be), how many other actors, however distinguished, could create Jiff out of whole cloth and make him such a convincing and funny original? Martin is also at the top of his form, especially in an early scene where he pitches his project to a powerful studio executive (Robert Downey Jr.)... Bowfinger is one of those comedies where everything works. Where the premise is not just a hook but the starting point for a story that keeps developing and revealing new surprises. Like a lot of Steve Martin's other writing, it is also gentle and good-natured: He isn't a savage ironist or a vulgarian, and when he makes us laugh, it's usually about things that are really funny. Shell-shocked in this year of gross and grosser comedies, we can turn to Bowfinger with merciful relief. - Roger Ebert
 
The New York Times 9 of 10
It takes a special breed of Hollywood operator to hang a poster for his promotional film about the Yugo ("The Practical and Affordable Car of the 80s") on the office wall. Along with a "Learn How to Act" brochure in which he offers to give lessons for what is surely an inflated fee. The title character in the hilarious, good-hearted Bowfinger is a tireless schemer who, like Zero Mostel in The Producers, is part of a great show-biz tradition: being ruthless, delusional and hellbent on turning lemons into lemonade. In a world where the semblance of power counts for almost as much as the real thing, he knows how to talk the talk. When he describes meeting someone famous, he casually adds: "By the way, he knew who I was. Big fan." Directed by Frank Oz, and every bit as winning as his In and Out and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Bowfinger is a coup for Steve Martin, who wrote the screenplay with obvious affection for all that he lampoons here. Starring with the equally irresistible Eddie Murphy, who is razor sharp in his dual role, Martin offers a knowing guide to making movies while accentuating the positive... Bowfinger is the kind of sly comedy in which these workers have to be taught how to clap a slate before the camera rolls but are discreetly reading Cahiers du Cinema before the process is over. "Did you know that Tom Cruise had no idea he was in that vampire movie until two years later?" Bobby asks, by way of justifying the outrageous scheme that he cooks up here. It seems that an associate of Bobby's, "a damn good writer, as well as accountant and part-time receptionist" (Adam Alexi-Malle), has come up with an idea about space aliens hiding in drops of water. And that "Chubby Rain," as the project is called, can't be made without a big action star. Kit Ramsey [the action star also played by Murphy] would be perfect. But he is much more interested in spiritual pursuits with the well-heeled religious cult presided over by Terence Stamp, as a steely-eyed sage... The Bowfinger plan for sneaking Kit Ramsey into the movie is funny enough in its own right. But it also plays to our suspicions that, even allowing for the inherent illusion that is filmmaking, so much of what turns up on the screen is fake. Bobby can be seen exploiting false appearances with a ragtag crew ("the most promising group of young professionals I've ever worked with!") that provides much of the background fun. Christine Baranski sweeps through the film as the drama queen who can't help noticing that something is wrong with this picture... Bowfinger is smoothly directed and acted with glee, showing off the quick-witted comic spirit that is enjoying a welcome resurgence late this summer. (Dick, the diabolically bubbly Watergate satire, and The Muse, forthcoming from Albert Brooks, are in much the same literate vein.) But what makes it work, beyond a landslide of wily gags that would do a Mad magazine satire proud, is the rueful experience that colors its humor. Martin doesn't flaunt this, but it shapes his screenplay effortlessly. - Janet Maslin
 
San Francisco Chronicle 8 of 10
...a venomous Valentine to Hollywood sugarcoated with laughs... Martin's setup is pure genius.. Martin the writer plants some wicked barbs in Hollywood's rear end about creative financing of movies and hoarding of profits, the art of the deal, hipper-than-thou attitudes and exploitation... - Bob Graham