I'll guess your height, your weight, or even your sex! (The Jerk (DVD))

Member Name: ihatebroccoli

Product:	The Jerk (DVD)
Date:	14/11/00 (216 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Steve Martin

Disadvantages: none

It is the original dim-witted funny movie!

If you thought Bowfinger was funny (or even if you didn’t), you will love The Jerk. Steve Martin plays Navin R. Johnson, the adopted son of a black family in Mississippi. Not until he is an adult does Navin apparently realise that his (black) parents are not his real birth parents!!! The humour starts here, and just goes on and on and on! Navin is very much a kind of Forrest Gump character, and one I’m sure Tom Hanks would have got his inspiration for the characterisation from. The film begins with the line “I was a poor black child” (said by Martin’s “white” character). He grows up believing that he is black, and that his “whiteness” is just a transitory phase, and on his birthday, decides to set out into the big wide world and find himself.

Navin leaves the house and sets off for St. Louis, in search of fortune and a life for himself. Night falls, and his family gather around the dinner table, apparently wondering what has become of Navin, until one of them shouts out of the window “how’re you going Navin?”, and we see he is *still* trying to thumb a lift from in front of the house. Eventually he flags down a passing truck, and settles in. The driver asks him how far he is going, to which Navin replies, “St. Louis”, then Navin asks the driver the same question, and he says, “To the end of this fence”. Navin has successfully managed to get a lift two doors down! I’ll try not to give too much away, but it is just so funny I can’t help it.

It’s not dated at all, and is still as funny today as I’m sure it would have been in 1979. Another of Martin’s movies is a favourite of mine, The Lonely Guy (1984), which also stars Charles Grodin (Midnight Run (1988)). This features a similar sort of humour to The Jerk, but not quite so ridiculous – still Martin at his finest
though. Bernadette Peters, who I remember from Annie (1982) as the woman who tried to pretend she was Annie real mother, is brilliant as Martin’s love interest Marie. She creates humour, which complements Martin’s brilliantly.

One of the funniest features in the movie is Navin’s sexual innocence – the calling of his private parts his “special purpose” causes all kinds of humour, as does his involvement with a fair/ circus performer – a women who rides her motorbike through rings of fire. Navin is the village idiot and the Shakespearian fool in one. He obtains several jobs on the way, as a petrol station attendant, and as a “weight guesser” at a travelling fair, until the fateful day when he makes his fortune and invents the bizarre “Opti-grab” – a handle for spectacles to stop them slipping off your nose. After developing this particular device, Navin strikes it rich, and moves into the house of his dreams with his girlfriend Marie. This creates some very funny moments, particularly with people coming to the house demanding money (now that Navin is rich), in particular, the man who is collecting to prevent the vicious sport of “Cat Juggling” (Martin plays the “Cat Juggler” in the film).

I have watched this film so many times, and it never fails to amuse. I end up quoting from it, for days afterwards, and have not heard a bad comment about The Jerk. Everyone I have spoken to found it funny, so it seems to appeal to all senses of humour. Despite having some humour elements which you really have to watch the film again to get, I think The Jerk enters the realm of all really good films that deserve a second viewing.

The Jerk was Steve Martin’s first starring role, and the beginning in the relationship between himself and director Carl Reiner, who later directed Martin’s movies Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man With Two Bra
ins (1983), and All of Me (1984). Reiner also does a bit of a Hitchcock, and cameos in the movie, as a cross-eyed film director affected by one of Navin’s inventions. Martin himself later produced a TV version of The Jerk in America, called “The Jerk Too” (1984).


Classic quotes:

- Navin: “For one dollar I'll guess your weight, your height, or your sex!”

- Mother: Navin, it's your birthday, and it's time you knew. You're not our natural-born child.
Navin: I'm not? You mean I'm gonna *stay* this colour?

- Navin: The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need! My name in print! That really makes somebody! Things are going to start happening to me now.


Good times to watch The Jerk – when you are in need of laugh, when Bowfinger is worn out, when you think *you’ve* got problems, when you are dreaming of your own house with “three swimming pools, a clam-shaped tub, and a disco room full of your own disco dancers”.

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