Classic Movie Review: The Jerk (1979)

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The Jerk (1979)

Directed by: Carl Reiner.

Written by: Steve Martin & Carl Gottlieb & Michael Elias.

Starring: Steve Martin (Navin / Cat Juggler), Bernadette Peters (Marie), Jackie Mason (Harry Hartounian), Catlin Adams (Patty Bernstein), Mabel King (Mother), Richard Ward (Father), Dick Anthony Williams (Taj), Bill Macy (Stan Fox), M. Emmet Walsh (Madman), Dick O'Neill (Frosty), Maurice Evans (Hobart), Carl Reiner (Carl Reiner The Celebrity).

Watching The Jerk, I couldn’t help but reflect on what makes a movie funny and what doesn’t – and how hard it can be to explain that. I couldn’t help but reflect on it, because one of things I was not doing while watching The Jerk was laugh – I just didn’t find very much of anything in the film very funny. In general, I think Steve Martin is a funny guy – and the director is Carl Reiner, who is also funny. It’s got a good supporting cast – including the wonderful Bernadette Peters. Yet the one moment in the film that actually got a laugh from me came from M. Emmet Walsh – who has a small role – and it’s when he gets so upset that Martin’s character ignored the sign that said “Carnival Personal Only” – and starts screaming about it. I’ll admit that the infamous line “I was born a poor, black child” also probably would have gotten a laugh from me had it not been as famous, so as to be spoiled when I sat down to watch The Jerk for the first time for this series. The rest of the movie though produced nary a chuckle from me – and this is from a film that the AFI named one of the 100 best comedies in film history. Really? I guess.

The Jerk is one of those comedies that doesn’t bother with things like plot or character – it’s what (I think) Roger Ebert would call a clothesline comedy – in which the plot is really just a clothesline to hang jokes from. If the jokes are funny, these comedies can be hilarious – in fact they can funnier than other comedies, because they dispense with all the idiot plots comedies run through, and get to the stuff people actually

remember. But when they don’t work, they are deadly – because there’s nothing else to fall back on. It’s impossible to care about the plot or the characters, because the movie doesn’t have any.

The movie follows Martin’s Navin R. Johnson on his journey – from his roots as a poor black child, to his adventures working in a gas station in St. Louis to working at a Carnival, to falling in love with Marie (Peters), with becoming a millionaire because of a stupid invention – and then losing it all, and ending up back where he started. This was Martin’s big foray into movies – he was already a comedy superstar, but that transition to the screen didn’t always go so smoothly. He co-wrote the screenplay, and it seems to me, that Martin knew his audience well, and knew what to give them. It also seems to me that Martin used his stardom to get as far away as possible from more movies like The Jerk as soon as he could. His next starring role – also alongside Peters – was in Herbert Ross’ brilliant, funny but melancholy musical Pennies from Heaven (1981). While throughout the 1980s, Martin would continue to make comedies – they weren’t as random as The Jerk.

The problem with The Jerk to me is just how obvious every joke in the movie is. In his review of The Jerk, Roger Ebert called the film a “Funny Hat” movie, in which we in the audience are supposed to laugh at the film simply because the main character is wearing a funny hat. There’s no reason he’s wearing it, nothing to relate to, it’s just a guy wearing a funny hat. And that’s true. Every joke in the movie is simple minded and obvious, and is another example of Martin wearing a funny hat. I think the film thinks it’s doing something clever throughout – it certainly sets up jokes one way, and then does something not quite expected (like what happens when Martin attaches a rope to a car and a church) – but the twist isn’t really any more original than the more mundane version would be.

Martin’s performance in The Jerk reeks of effort – which is the opposite of what Martin’s charms normally are. He is one of those guys who makes being funny seem effortless – like he’s barely trying. Here though, his every movement – every vocal tic – seems aimed at getting a big laugh, and as a result, I never really did laugh at him. Peters fairs slightly better – under giant blonde hair, she’s essentially playing the “ditzy blonde” – which she does well, I guess.

I do recognize that many people find The Jerk to be hilarious – and that, to a certain generation, it is a seminal comedy. Perhaps that’s the problem – that I’m now too old for The Jerk’s juvenile humor to be funny, and too young to look back at the movie with any sense of nostalgia – since it opened two years before I was born. Or perhaps The Jerk just isn’t funny.

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