'Bowfinger' represented an end of an era for two of my favorite actors

I just did a re-watch of Bowfinger -- the Steve Martin-Eddie Murphy comedy which came out 20 years ago. It was a movie that was both a broadly funny and slyly sophisticated Hollywood satire, that managed to milk the best aspects of both leading men's personas while creating a genuinely surprising narrative with a satisfying payoff.

I've always felt this movie deserved a better reputation than it has -- it was a modest hit at the box office, but certainly performed on the lower end of most Murphy comedies at the time -- and which it got great reviews, I feel like it's rarely mentioned among Martin and Murphy's best loved films, which has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

Viewing it 20 years later, as a massive fan of both actors, it feels almost like a bittersweet last hurrah for them both. Martin made a couple more very mainstream, mediocre hits after this and then settled into more lowkey dramatic, supporting roles.

His Oscar hosting stints, recent special alongside Martin Short and his MasterClass (which I was privileged enough to receive access to for Christmas) proved to me that his legendary wit and timing are still intact, but that he clearly wanted to downshift in his later years.

Murphy is, of course, a different story entirely. Bowfinger arrived during the peak of his second career resurgence following the success of his first reboot of The Nutty Professor. Unlike some of his later, more lowbrow movies (think Norbit), this is one where his penchant for playing multiple characters really does pay off.

In this film he plays an exaggerated, angry version of himself -- an embittered action star named Kit Ramsey (who is affiliated with an obvious parody of Scientology called MindHead) and his nerdy brother Jiff, who manages to be both very funny and occasionally quite moving.

It's really a tour de force performance -- and although he and Martin make an unlikely duo, they seem to bring out the best in each other. This was the last time Martin got to play a manic, high energy comic character and it's great to see him outside of family-comedy mode. And with Murphy, this is further proof of what he was capable of when he had material that matched his considerable talents.

I've lamented this in the past, so I'm not saying anything new -- but Murphy has pulled off one of the strangest career disappearing acts in Hollywood history. Following a string of embarrassing failures he didn't make a movie for four years -- an eternity in this industry -- and then returned with the poorly received Help rip-off Mr. Church. And he hasn't made another movie three years since that one.

He's supposed to be appearing in a biopic about the legendary blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore written by the men behind The People vs. Larry Flynt, so that certainly has promise -- but hardcore Murphy fans like me are used to having our hearts broken.

What this movie tells me about him, and artists like him, is that they need to stay hungry they need to want to challenge themselves or they will flame out or fade away.