"Bowfinger" uses two of the trade's sharpest comics to turn out a howlingly funny movie. The film focuses on a producer-director of a small outfit ironically called Bowfinger International run by Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin), who hopes to make a movie with his budget of $2,184, saved by putting $1 a week into a box from the time he was ten years old. Unfortunately the actor he wants would probably not consider even looking at a script for ten times that figure. This does not stop the title character, who comes across with a bold idea: superstar Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) will star in his film without even knowing that he's in the movie. How Bowfinger follows him around the streets of Hollywood, capturing him on celluloid without the man's awareness, is the concept that delivers the almost non-stop guffaws and chuckles.

The movie opens as Bowfinger is about to get his phone service cut off for non- payment. But Bobby is nothing if not determined, inspired and disciplined. Bent on making a low-budget sci-fi entry about an alien takeover of the Earth entitled "Chubby Rain," he enlists his loyal team of actors. His screenwriter Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle) has turned up a script that Bowfinger considers a masterpiece. With a would-be cameraman, he rounds up a crew of illegal Mexicans and sets out to capture Kit on his hidden camera. Kit is the perfect person to play a man terrified by aliens as he is has a paranoid personality. Betsy the dog, who has been well-trained in obedience, does her part to further terrify the already paranoid Kit by following him through an indoor parking garage wearing high-heeled shoes. Each time Kit turns quickly around to see the source of the clackety clack, he observes nothing at all, furnishing him a wide-eyed look of terror.

``Bowfinger'' also gives Eddie Murphy one of his funniest roles ever. Murphy has the dual role of Kit Ramsey, a self involved, paranoid action flick superstar, and of Jiff, the dorky dunce that Bobby uses as his stand-in when he decides to make a Kit Ramsey movie without Kit's knowledge.

Heather Graham does wonderful work as Daisy, an Ohio naif who travels to Hollywood seeking work as an actress and learns very quickly which people she has to bed to get a leading role. . In one priceless bit, Bowfinger asks Daisy if she would be willing to do a nude scene. In ten seconds she rattles off every justification ever given for an actress to take her shirt off, goes through the motions of pretending they are serious standards she must meet, and immediately agrees with a big smile.