Hey folks, Harry here with Quint's review of BOWFINGER, the latest Frank Oz film which stars Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin and has a pretty funny trailer in theaters everywhere at the moment. Somewhere down below, I believe Quint makes reference to my dislike of the first BATMAN film. But is sometimes the case with drunken sharkphelic seamen, their memory is a bit off. I do not hold Tim Burton responsible for bastardizing Sam Hamm's brilliant first draft. Far from him. I blame the following people that all lent an ample sum of liquid paper and skittish pen marks across a masterpiece which became merely a good movie. A good movie, that could very well have been the greatest action/adventure movie we've seen. Sigh. These are the folks I blame. Jon Peters, Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger and Warren Skaaren (the screenwriter they brought in to 'fix' the script to the previously listed peoples' liking. Sigh. Just wanted to make sure my feelings on this weren't distorted by Quint. I love Burton. But those people. Sigh. Well... ya know. You win some and ya lose some. Here's Quint and BOWFINGER...
Ahoy, Constant Readers. Hey Harry. It's Quint here once again, this time with a look at Frank Oz's and Steve Martin's Bowfinger. You may remember my review of the script a while back. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend you read it before this review. A lot of what I wrote there pertains to what I address in the review. You can read it HERE.
Alright, finished? Good. As you now know, when I reviewed the script it was at an early stage of production. It's title has since been shorted from Bowfinger's Big Thing, and the character of Kit Ramsey is now clearly a black character. The script I read had no dialogue about "secret white languages" or about how "crackers like Schwarzenegger and Stallone get all the best action lines," etc. So, Eddie Murphey's involvement was a surprise to me, but a welcome one after I saw the trailer.
After having seen the film, I noticed that a lot of the minor script points had been rewritten, not just on Murphey's side, either. The character of Bowfinger, played by Steve Martin, h ad many lines cut and/or added that shift his character slightly and not for the better. I was pretty confounded while watching the movie unfold that most of the classic Steve Martin lines cut out all together. There were lines and scenes missing from the final movie that made Martin's character sympathetic, instead of just a bumbling hack director. There were lines in the early script, written by Martin, by the way, that could have been, no, would have been on the same level as the best lines from The Jerk. My script review has a couple examples of this, so again. If you haven't read it, go do so. It'll help you understand where I am coming from with this. And those were the lesser lines!!!!
And so, AICN's great sailor learned the hard way one of the great drawbacks to reading scripts early. I am positive that I would have liked this movie more if I hadn't read the superior early draft of the script, for had I read the shooting draft instead, I most likely wouldn't have known about those could have been classic lines or laughed at scenes that I'd never see on screen.
I hear Harry talk every now and again about his disappointment with Batman and I've always been like, "What are you talking about? I love Burton's Batman!" He tells me that Sam Hamm's original script was amazing and Burton bastardized the script to fit his own wants and needs. I never really understood what Harry was telling me. "But it's still a good movie," I'd say. But, unfortunately, Harry had read a script that was better than the movie that followed it and it forever altered his view of the film. Until Bowfinger, this had never happened to me.
See, what I'm saying is that the movie was pretty good. It had some good laughs (and some bad non-laughs), but as I was sitting there watching it, I couldn't help but think of what it could have been if it just hadn't rewritten itself so much that it forgot what it was. The script I read would have put Bowfinger proudly amongst my comedy DVD collection that includes Blazing Saddles, The Jerk, Austin Powers, etc. I'm not kidding when I say this movie could have been considered a relative comedy classic for this day and age. Instead, I got a movie that was "pretty good," at best. Of course, that's me. Most of you will see this film for the first time in a theater, in a version that will not be altered. The first time I saw this movie, it was in my head while reading the script and I saw a better movie, in my opinion. But, I would wager you guys will like it more. Well, that's enough about that. You know where I come from for the rest of the review.
While I do sound negative about this film, it still retains some good redeeming qualities. The main one being Eddie Murphey in his dual role as Kit Ramsey and Jiff. Let's start with Kit. Kit is a big action star with some serious nervous problems, the main being his belief that aliens are after him. He's an enraged black actor who is spoiled silly and has an ego the size of the budgets of his movies. By enraged black actor I mean one who is in a constant state of yelling about how all the "crackers" are out to get him and steal his fame and fortune away from him. His enraged rants are hysterical at times, specifically the one about Academy Awards and retarded slaves. You'll know it when you hear it.
Murphey is also terrific as Jiff, the nerdy, braces-wearing go-getter that's hired as Kit's body double whose only dream in life is to be accepted for who he is and run errands to Starbucks for his friends. Steve Martin is at his best only when onscreen with Kit and Jiff (aka Murphey), but I'll come back to Martin later.
Most of the supporting cast is wasted, with the exception of Terrance Stamp as the leader of Mind Head, a kind of new age counseling center that has Murphey's Kit Ramsey as a client. Just the fact that you get to hear Terrance Stamp, General Zod himself say "Mr. Wiener," makes the movie worth the matinee price of admission. Geeky, I know. So sue me.
As for the rest of the supporting cast, well, I'd like to focus on 2 specific members:
-Heather Graham- I usually love Heather Graham. I loved her in Boogie Nights, I loved her in The Spy Who Shagged me, but I didn't like her at all in this movie. There was nothing wrong with her character, but for some reason Heather Graham herself didn't sit well with me. I can't put my finger on why. Maybe it was her awful accent when in character, maybe it was just my mood at the time, I don't know. I do know that I went in expecting to love her, as I've always done in the past, but I came out really disliking her in the movie. I feel bad for it because by all means she was right for the character and she's just so darn cute, but I still didn't like her int his movie. I will say one thing, though and that is if the movie is anywhere close to reality (which, unfortunately, I'm sure it's not) I want to work on a Heather Graham movie someday. Again, you'll understand in due time.
-Jamie Kennedy- Why doesn't this guy get better parts? I mean, arguably, he's the best character in Scream 1 and 2, two huge films and what does he get outside of those movies? The line, "Yo," in As Good As It Gets and an extremely minuscule role in Enemy of the State where if you blink you miss him and now Bowfinger where he plays a completely forgettable, yet at least more prominent, character.
The rest of the cast do their thing and they do it well enough, but none are memorable.
Alright, I promised I'd get back to Steve Martin. His best moments in the film, as I said before, are with Murphey. Unfortunately, the rest of his screentime is unmemorable, which is a shame because he was born to play this character, at least as I knew him from the script. He tries, he strains to do well on this film, which he does, but not anywhere near what Murphey is doing. Bobby Bowfinger could have been Martin's '90s equal to his one perfect character, The Jerk himself, Navin Johnson.
Once again, my opinion on this film is fairly unique being that the main problems I had with this film were almost all based on expectations I had from reading a great early draft of the screenplay. Hopefully it will work better for you. I've seen a few positive reviews and that's great. It's much better to have fun with a movie than to not. This movie, for me, is a could have been film, much like The Mummy was for Harry. Although it suffers a bit from giving away too much in the trailer, there are still two or three good scenes that are left unspoiled, most notably the parking lot scene which had the audience I saw it with in stitches. The parking lot scene, by the way, was one of the moments from the early script. After you see the movie, just to get an idea of what I read, try to imagine almost all of Steve Martin's scenes in that same vain and level of comedy.
Even with all the things that I dislike about it, I'm still going to see it again. It's not a bad movie, it's just a great one. It's still worth a matinee. Give it a shot, especially if you're a Steve Martin or Eddie Murphey fan. Hopefully you'll like it more than I did. As a matter of fact, I'm sure most of you will like it more than I did. But, until next time, fellow geeks, this is Quint signing off.
