Martin actually plays the title character Bobby Bowfinger... a would-be movie director who at 50 feels it`s a now or never time. When his Iranian accountant Afrim - (Adam Alexei-Malle) writes a screenplay called Chubby Rain about aliens arriving in raindrops Bowfinger is ecstatic... he gets tongue-in-cheek agreement from production executive (Robert Downey Jr). to greenlight the project if they sign megastar Kit Ramsey - (Eddie Murphy ) for the lead. Ramsey is suffering paranoid delusions and when the production starts shooting the film around him without his knowledge, the paranoia just gets worse... add to the mix a nerdish Kit Ramsey look-alike called Jiff - guess who ?... and you have moments of hysterical comic brilliance.
There are simply delicious crazily funny moments in Bowfinger but the film doesn`t quite work as a whole - because there`s no grounding in any sort of cinematic reality. It`s just a romp with some fine performances - Eddie Murphy is a major talent, whenever he`s on screen either as Kit or Jiff, the energy level of the film goes up a number of notches... Christine Baransky is elegantly droll as one of the leads in the film who wonders why she never gets to meet her co-star. Heather Graham is wonderful as ever, but you do wonder about the treatment of her character as a newly arrived midwestern girl who`ll sleep her way to any advantage... David`s Comment: A surprisingly bitter, and only occasionally funny, script from Steve Martin which purports to be a satire of Hollywood - but compared with Altman`s The Player (which was a genuine satire) this is pretty thin. The best satire, the best comedy, are rooted in reality, and there`s nothing real about Martin`s Ed Wood like character. The laughs come from Eddie Murphy - excellent in two roles. Heather Graham`s good, but her role is conceived as an ill-tempered attack by Martin on his ex girlfriend Anne Heche
