Steve Martin plays Bobby Bowfinger a less than legitimate movie producer. If you could call him that at all. Bobby falls into a movie script written by his accountant that seems less than exciting but still he decides that this is the film he is going to make.

His film company who have never made a movie are a little pessimistic to start with until Bobby manages to get the support of Jerry Renfro (Robert Downey Jr.). A successful Hollywood producer Renfro gets fooled into thinking that this is going to be a big budget production starring none other than Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy)

Kit knows nothing about this of course and somehow Bobby manages to make the film anyway by just filming him in the street as the other actors walk up and say lines to him. Then Kit’s twin brother gets in on the action as well.

Keep your eye out for some other great input into the film from such as Terence Stamp and Heather Graham.

So How Does This Transfer Hold Up?

VIDEO
This is certainly collectors edition Anamorphic Widescreen transfer quality. In fact it’s bordering on reference quality.

Shadow detail was always perfect. Images are consistently sharp and clear with no hint of edge enhancement and only some very minor aliasing, and there were no MPEG artefacts.

Colours were nothing short of brilliant, saturation and tonal range was perfect.

The only drawbacks in the transfer are the Layer change at 50.45 where there is a good-sized pause in the film. This could be attributed to my player though.

There are also some film artefacts in the opening credits and at the end of the movie, which are quite noticeable.

AUDIO
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track is unfortunately nothing spectacular. Dialogue was for the most clear and crisp but some of Eddie Murphy’s dialogue lacked clarity at times.

The musical score from David Newman was fitting but not really memorable. A good score should leave some sort of positive impression to be worthy of high marks.

For the bulk of the film the surrounds and base channel were silent until a heavy audio scene towards the end of the movie.

The bulk of the audio was found in the front sound stage which is fine as this was not a really a heavy audio type of film.

EXTRAS
Now here’s where things get really beefed up.

Theatrical Trailer

Production notes

Cast and Crew Bio’s

DVD Rom links, basically just the web site for the film.

2 Deleted scenes

Outtakes, some funny stuff here.

Featurette: Spotlight on location. This is a quite a good making of documentary, and gives a lot of insight into the film.

Audio Commentary. Director Frank Oz gives a great audio commentary and sheds some light on his interesting techniques. I usually cringe at the thought of an audio commentary but this one held my attention and didn’t turn out to be a snoozer, so I guess it can’t be too bad.

OVERALL