Review of Bowfinger (1999) by Lyndon G — 05 Nov 2009

This is a movie I like as much for dry humor and a whimsical premise as for clever execution. How can you go wrong with the adventures of a rookie producer trying to film an actor into a part without his knowledge? (It's probably important at this juncture to point out that I don't mind Eddie Murphy.) The situations get so unnatural you have to break down and think the result is brilliant or terrible. That probably depends on whether you think Steve Martin can pull it off; I still do, and that's why I'm adding half a star to what is a minor movie by most standards--minor but good!

My key observation is that while Bowfinger follows the conventions of straight-to-DVD movies, if you pay attention you'll notice that it does so intentionally. It is about a director who can't produce that quality. Occasionally it breaks free of these creaky conventions with a sudden dose of canniness. For example the cast working for director Bowfinger is made up of pretty stupid people--they have to be in order to be duped into his scheme (*they* don't realize that the famous actor doesn't know he's in the movie!). This accounts for all their goofy nodding and mugging. And yet the most air-brained one of all, Heather Graham's sleep-to-the-bottom nymphet actress, delivers a line that reveals she is the only one who has figured out what's going on. Something caught her eye or she got the knowledge in her travels from bed to bed trying to expand her part with new scenes, but either way, like Daisy in The Great Gatsby, she is not half as stupid as she seems. Somehow these little revelations work.

There's an argument that an auteur always works within the limits of personal intelligence, and often it takes a great director, for example, to make a good movie about an average director. If Bowfinger succeeds by making itself about the most low-brow of movies, and looking brilliant by comparison, more power to it. I happen to think there's a little more going on, but a wily bathos is part of it.

The Producers is a great movie (in my opinion) about another show business heist, a con engineered by two producers who hedge their bets on a flop and end up in tears when the flop is a hit. No doubt Bowfinger is an attack on Hollywood, but it's also about determination and the impossible. Sometimes the impossible requires enormous courage and deception and not a little blindness and luck. It can be overlooked that the impossible is usually laughable.