Bowfinger (1999)

Plot of Bowfinger: Bowfinger is a movie producer on the edge of disaster, together with a small team of hopefuls. When his accountant comes up with a script which he thinks will make a great film he gets on with the job, deciding that the star will be Kit Ramsey. When Ramsey turn him down he decides to make the film using images of Ramsey without the star’s knowledge. A young woman called Daisy, gets off the bus in Hollywood and more or less accidentally joins the cast.  Ramsey is mentally fragile, and resorts to the assistance of the leader of MindHead who councils him to avoid exposing himself to young women. Because of the filming Ramsey believes himself to be being tracked by aliens and so hides in the MindHead headquarters, and as a result Bowfinger looks for a stand-in, finding Jiff who is the spitting image of Ramsey, and who turns out to be his twin brother. Meanwhile Daisy has become very popular by sleeping with nearly everybody, each of them thinking they are unique in the receipt of her favours. Jiff has been persuaded to do everything required of him, but as the filming is coming to an end it is obvious that Ramsey’s permission is required for the film to be released. How can it be achieved?

Content: Quite a lot of talk about sex  but no actual nudity, and only one scene of snogging. Bowfinger borrows a Mercedes and gets close to a distributor while he pretends to be on a mobile – actually a car phone (They were still about in 1999). Dave, the cameraman is seen borrowing camera equipment. There are meetings in Bowfinger’s bungalow with the potential cast, including the camera crew who have been picked up at the border from a group of Mexican immigrants. Ramsey is filmed in various situations, once in a parking garage where he ends up running away. Later he is seen in the MindHead building, where there are people sitting about with paper hats on their heads, being helped by the leader of the organisation. There is a scene where Jiff is required to cross a highway full of speeding traffic, assured by Bowfinger that the vehicles are being driven by stunt drivers.

A View: The film is said by some to be one of Eddie Murphy’s best films, and really so it seems since he plays two very different characters very successfully, neither of them in what we might regard as the Eddie Murphy mould.  I always enjoy films about film making anyway, and this outing joins a couple of other which I think are well worth seeing, notably ‘Wag the Dog’ and ‘Tropic Thunder’ And I’m pleased to say that I laughed. It is funny, so I absolutely recommend it.

Fun Fact: The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that ‘For the record Mr Martin denies that MindHead is based on Scientology.