Steve Martin became an official movie star via a 1979 comedy that became an instant classic called The Jerk, a comedy that is silly, improbable, and constantly strains the boundaries of logic and continuity, but provides consistent laughs anyway.
Martin plays Navin Johnson, the adopted son of a family of black sharecroppers, who had no idea that he was adopted ("You mean I'm gonna stay this color?"), who finally leaves the comfort of the Missouri farm where he was raised to find his "special purpose". We watch as Navin inexplicably becomes the sex slave of a circus performer named Patty (Caitlin Adams), who has him convinced that this is his special purpose. When he does escape Patty's iron grip, he does find happiness with a cosmotologist named Marie (Bernadette Peters), while at the same time, inventing a special kind of eyeglasses that make him a billionaire and turns him into a bum almost as quickly, which is where Navin is when we meet him at the beginning of the film, which is actually told in flashback.
Carl Reiner's energetic direction and a hysterical screenplay by Martin, Carl Gottleib, and Michael Elias work in sync beautifully to bring us a rolling-on-the-floor-funny story that despite the absolute ridiculous and stupid things that happen to Navin, we find ourselves buying it and being behind the character. We laugh when Navin finally realizes that he's not black and we laugh when a psycho played by M. Emmett Walsh picks Navin's name out of a phone book and decides to murder him and we laugh when for his first date with Marie, Navin orders dinner from Pizza in a Cup. We even laugh when Navin hits it big and has his dream house built and offers us a description of the various rooms.
Martin is wonderful in the title role and always keeps Navin likable and he has a very nice on screen chemistry with Bernadette Peters, which actually led to a brief real life romance and an on screen reunion 2 years later in Pennies from Heaven, I also loved Richard Ward and Mabel King as Navin's adopted parents and Bill Macy as the guy who partners Navin in his eyeglass invention, which comes to be known as "Opti-Grab."
Nothing deep here, just one laugh after another right up to the slightly contrived ending, which I can forgive because the journey to that point had me on the floor.
Martin plays Navin Johnson, the adopted son of a family of black sharecroppers, who had no idea that he was adopted ("You mean I'm gonna stay this color?"), who finally leaves the comfort of the Missouri farm where he was raised to find his "special purpose". We watch as Navin inexplicably becomes the sex slave of a circus performer named Patty (Caitlin Adams), who has him convinced that this is his special purpose. When he does escape Patty's iron grip, he does find happiness with a cosmotologist named Marie (Bernadette Peters), while at the same time, inventing a special kind of eyeglasses that make him a billionaire and turns him into a bum almost as quickly, which is where Navin is when we meet him at the beginning of the film, which is actually told in flashback.
Carl Reiner's energetic direction and a hysterical screenplay by Martin, Carl Gottleib, and Michael Elias work in sync beautifully to bring us a rolling-on-the-floor-funny story that despite the absolute ridiculous and stupid things that happen to Navin, we find ourselves buying it and being behind the character. We laugh when Navin finally realizes that he's not black and we laugh when a psycho played by M. Emmett Walsh picks Navin's name out of a phone book and decides to murder him and we laugh when for his first date with Marie, Navin orders dinner from Pizza in a Cup. We even laugh when Navin hits it big and has his dream house built and offers us a description of the various rooms.
Martin is wonderful in the title role and always keeps Navin likable and he has a very nice on screen chemistry with Bernadette Peters, which actually led to a brief real life romance and an on screen reunion 2 years later in Pennies from Heaven, I also loved Richard Ward and Mabel King as Navin's adopted parents and Bill Macy as the guy who partners Navin in his eyeglass invention, which comes to be known as "Opti-Grab."
Nothing deep here, just one laugh after another right up to the slightly contrived ending, which I can forgive because the journey to that point had me on the floor.