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When you figure that this summer's runaway hit The Blair Witch Project was made for less than $50,000, maybe destitute Hollywood producer Bobby Bowfinger (Martin) isn't totally crazy to think he can shoot a sci-fi thriller for the puny $2,184 that he scrounges up from his cash box. It helps that he has no intention of paying a single penny to his leading man, Kit Ramsey (Murphy), one of Hollywood's biggest action stars. Instead, Martin ingeniously gets Murphy for free by instructing his gullible cast of actors, a motley crew that includes a newcomer (Graham) and a has-been (Baranski), to accost Murphy in public places and snap out their lines while Martin covertly films the startled star's reactions. Voila! Instant movie. When an already paranoid Murphy flees these apparent stalkers, all the better—it's an action scene.
Bowfinger, written by Martin and directed with a sure comic touch by Frank Oz (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), is a fizzy, funny send-up of the screen trade. It smartly skewers obvious targets (cell phones and ambitious starlets) as well as more controversial ones (New Age cults). Martin and Murphy make perfect comic foils. Portraying the pathetically desperate but ever optimistic Bowfinger, Martin hilariously nails the sweaty determination of a marginal Hollywood player, a man so behind the hipness curve that he prepares for a big meeting by donning a fake pony-tail. Murphy prances through dual roles, playing both the egomaniacal Ramsey and his stand-in, a bumbling doofus thrilled just to be in pictures and even more thrilled when he finds himself standing chest-to-chest with a topless Graham.
While Bowfinger is never as viciously incisive as such great Hollywood satires as Sunset Boulevard or The Player, it's clever and it's funny, and that is saying a lot this summer. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Boffo buffoonery at Hollywood's expense
Claire Danes, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Pullman
Upon graduating from high school, two teenage girls (Danes and Beckinsale) head off to Bangkok for a couple of weeks of fun and sun. But this is no Betty and Veronica Go to Thailand. When Thai officials discover heroin in one of their knapsacks—the girls claim not to know it was there—the teens land in a squalid local prison with little hope for release.
Brokedown Palace, directed by Jonathan Kaplan (The Accused and Bad Girls), is a gritty, often compelling drama about growing up under duress. Although it contains the obligatory ingredients (crawling bugs, bad food, thuggish guards and a corrupt justice system) of American-in-a-stinking-foreign-jail movies like 1978's Midnight Express and 1998's Return to Paradise, Palace puts as much emphasis on character development as it does on vile living conditions. And Brokedown Palace adds dramatic texture by maintaining ambiguity about Danes's innocence or guilt.
Danes, recovering nicely from the bore that was Mod Squad, deftly portrays the feistier of the friends, while Beckinsale (The Last Days of Disco) is affecting as the one fast going under. Pullman slouches skillfully through his role as a cynical American attorney who aids the two. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Girls just wanna get out
John Turturro, Katherine Borowitz, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Walken
John Turturro should get a free pass for the next five years on anniversary, birthday and Valentine's Day gifts for his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz. That's because Illuminata, a comedy-drama he cowrote and directed, offers a whopper of a present in its leading role, which Turturro lovingly uses to showcase Borowitz's superior acting and her finely etched beauty. That the movie is less of a gift to viewers may be beside the point.
Illuminata focuses on a theater company in New York City at the turn of the century. Borowitz is the company's leading lady, a talented thespian who displays the patience of a saint when it comes to dealing with the artistic temperament of her longtime beau (Turturro), a playwright. The movie is about art, love and professional rivalries. It is often amusing but even more often self-indulgent, proving that artistic crises are better suffered than seen.
In supporting roles, Sarandon vamps amusingly as a rival diva, while Walken mugs outrageously as an effete theater critic. (R)
Bottom Line: One for the Turturro family scrapbook
Edward Furlong, Giuseppe Andrews, James DeBello, Sam Huntington
Get out that checklist for raunchy, adolescent-boy movies. Is there a scene in which someone is humiliated while using the toilet? Check. How about copious vomiting? Check. An attractive, lascivious older gal bedding one of our young heroes? Check. And finally, gratuitous shots of bare-breasted women? Check.
Yep, Detroit Rock City has it all. An energetic if perfunctory coming-of-age comedy, Detroit follows four male high school seniors (Furlong and Huntington are best) in 1978 as they take a road trip to the Motor City for a concert by Kiss, one of the era's top rock bands. Along the way each boy matures and learns a valuable life lesson—as well as the lyrics to such Kiss anthems as "Rock and Roll All Night" and "Love Gun."
The film never transcends its adolescent guy focus and will appeal primarily to teen boys and grown men still convinced that aging rockers who cover their faces with greasepaint are cool. (R)
Bottom Line: You can Kiss this one goodbye
>Kirsten Dunst
At age 12, Kirsten Dunst played a bloodsucker in Interview with the Vampire. Two years later, in 1996, she was rushed to the ER as a teen runaway. But her role as Betsy Jobs, a schoolgirl who unwittingly brings down President Nixon in the new comedy Dick, provided a new challenge: She had to brush up on her history. "I didn't know too much about Watergate," says Dunst, 17. "They didn't really talk about it at school." She and costar Michelle Williams also had to hone their roller-skating skills for a few scenes. "It looked good," she says. "[But] you weren't seeing us fall."
Dunst's career, at least, is on steady ground; she also starred in July's beauty pageant spoof Drop Dead Gorgeous. Meanwhile, she enters her senior year at a private L.A. high school this fall. Despite her success, the actress is content to live with her mom, Inez, a homemaker, and brother Christian, 12, in Toluca Lake, Calif. "Even when I think I am at the age past needing my mother, I still want her there," says Dunst, whose dad, Klaus, a sales rep, is divorced from Inez but lives nearby. "You need guidance—otherwise you're going to be a 17-year-old who thinks she's 30."
>THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT Without adding to the hype, let's just say that this fictional shockumentary proves the horror you never see and can only imagine is way, way scarier than some mask-wearing maniac swinging a bloody axe. (R)
DICK Two teenyboppers (Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) turn out to have been Watergate's Deep Throat in this comic gem. A swell choice if you're old enough that the very name Rose Mary Woods puts a goofy smile on your face. (PG-13)
TWIN FALLS IDAHO Conjoined twins (once known as Siamese) are the central characters in this intensely strange but also moving debut film by director Michael Polish, who cowrote it and costars with his twin brother, Mark. (R)
THE IRON GIANT It's a good summer for animated movies: first Tarzan, now this charming fable about a young boy who befriends a big metal robot. (G)
- Contributors:
- Julie Jordan.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
