| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
B+ |
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| Acting: |
B |
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| Direction: |
B+ |
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| Visuals: |
B- |
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"We're trying to make a movie here, not a film!"
by Ryan (movies profile)
Apr 1, 2005
2
of
2 people found this review helpful
What if you were in a movie and didn't know it? For some of this, it would be exciting, others puzzling. For Eddie Murphy's character, action star Kit Ramsey, it builds his paranoia, yet has no suspicion that he is the star of a movie written by the assistant to washed-up movie producer Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin), "Chubby Rain." In an effort to restart his movie producing career, Bowfinger comes up with a plan, a plan to make a movie with a huge star, one so big that the movie must be a success. Only problem: they don't have the movie to pay Kit Ramsey, so they try to make a movie using footage of Ramsey on the street, talking to the characters of the movie while eating his lunch, and so on. The big ideas of aliens taking over the Earth in huge rain-drops that Bowfinger has in his mind leads him to want to make this movie great, he's just in no position to do it. The film crew? They're union, I suppose, but in an illegal-alien-from-Mexico kind of way. The actors? Has beens and naive never-will-bes from Ohio who buy into everything Bowfinger feeds them. The best performance in the film is by Christine Baranski as the prima-donna actress who really has no reason to think so highly of herself. Heather Graham is the girl from Ohio with huge Hollywood dreams who sleeps with everyone in the film crew in an effort to gain bigger roles. And then there's Jiff Ramsey, Kit's brother (also played by Eddie Murphy), the slower, dorkier ying to the action star yang that is Kit. When Jiff's not sharpening pencils for Bowfinger, he's running across a highway full of live traffic, though he's told they're all stunt drivers. Bowfinger is not a great film, but it is entertaining in the way it portrays the little man in Hollywood. There are film makers out there without access to the studio system, but still want to make a movie that appears to be a big buget science fiction film. The movie also takes a jab at Hollywood mind-cults at Kit Ramsey is a member of Mind Head, an outfit that makes him paranoid that aliens are after him, so his encounters with the actors in the movie he's in seem totally natural to him. Frank Oz hits most of the marks, and Steve Martin is perfect as the swarmy, calculating movie producer who hoodwinks the crew, and the star of the film, even when he has no clue what's going on around him. |
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