The Jerk

The Jerk (1979) is Carl Reiner's rags-to-riches-to-rags film comedy of belated self-discovery. This was Steve Martin's first starring role in a feature film and was also written by him. The film also features Bernadette Peters, M. Emmet Walsh and Jackie Mason. Reiner has a cameo appearance and his son Rob Reiner has an uncredited bit part.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Jerk the 48th greatest comedy film of all time.

This film is number 20 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies", and number 89 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.

Plot summary

Navin Johnson (Martin) is the adopted white son of black sharecroppers, who grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of the fact of his adoption. He stands out in his family not just because of his skin color, but also because of his lack of rhythm. About the blues, he says, "There's something about those songs. They depress me!" However, one night while listening to a song by Lawrence Welk on the radio, his feet start moving and he feels the urge to dance. He shouts out that he wants to "be somebody!"

He decides to hitchhike to St. Louis, where the song was broadcast. On the way, he stops at a motel. During the night, a dog wakes Navin up with his barking. Navin thinks the dog is trying to tell him there is a fire, decides to name the dog, "Lifesaver," and then subsequently wakes up the other hotel guests to rescue them from the fire. When everyone realizes it was a false alarm, one man angrily suggests he call the dog "Shithead" instead, so he does.

Navin goes to a gas station to use the bathroom, and is offered a job there by owner Jackie Mason. Having no other place to live, Mason offers him a storage room at the station. Soon Navin's name is in the new phone book, and he celebrates stating, "things are going to start happening to me now." Sure enough, a gun-wielding lunatic (played by M. Emmet Walsh) randomly flips through the phone book and picks Navin R. Johnson as his next victim. The lunatic tracks Navin down at the gas station and parks across the street. As he takes aim, Navin is fixing the slippery glasses of a customer by adding a handle and a nose brake. The customer offers to split the profits with Navin 50/50 if he can manage to market the invention. The customer leaves, and the crazed gunman tries to assassinate Navin. The sniper hits oil cans in the station window and a nearby vending machine filled with soda cans; Navin asssumes that the gunman is out to shoot the cans -- "he hates these cans!"

The lunatic continues to fire at Navin, and eventually chases him into an area where SJM Fiesta Shows, a travelling carnival, is getting ready to leave town. Navin climbs into one of the trucks and hides from the crazed gunman. He is taken away by the truck and ends up getting a job with SJM Fiesta Shows as a weight guesser. Frosty, his new boss, tells him "There's a big future in weight guessing." While employed there, Navin meets a daredevil biker woman and has a sexual relationship with her, finding out the first time what his "special purpose" (his euphemism for penis) is for. He then meets a woman named Marie (Bernadette Peters) and arranges a date with her. Patty, the biker, confronts them, but Marie knocks her out cold. While courting, Navin and Marie walk along the beach and sing "Tonight You Belong to Me," with Martin playing the ukulele and Peters playing the cornet. (Martin had learned to play the banjo while working at Disneyland.) Navin and Marie fall in love, but Marie decides to leave him.

Navin soon finds out that his glasses invention, now called the Opti-Grab, is selling big, and he's entitled to half of the profits. His first check is for $250,000. He locates Marie, they marry, and hire a live-in butler and chambermaid (in a small apartment!). His next check is for $750,000, which he uses to buy an extravagant mansion.

Navin does not stay rich for long, as director Carl Reiner (playing himself) files a class-action lawsuit against Navin, claiming that the invention has made him cross-eyed. A million other people, including "Iron Balls McGinty" (played by co-writer Carl Gottlieb), a goon that Navin had a run in with, have the same complaint and join the lawsuit. Navin is forced to refund $1.09 to every Opti-Grab customer (he is seen hand-writing each check) which bankrupts him.

Depressed, he leaves Marie, taking off for the streets, where he was when the movie began. He leaves abruptly wearing his robe and shorts. He claims that the only things he needs to survive are the T.V. remote control, paddle ball game, matches, and a few other items. He then trades all of these items for a thermos. In the beginning of the movie, he proclaimed, "I'm not a bum. I'm a jerk! I once had wealth, power, and the love of a beautiful woman. Now, I only have two things. My friends, and, uh, my thermos." (The "friends" are three other bums) But Navin's family, who carefully invested the small sums of money he sent to them throughout the film, is contacted by Marie. They pick him up off the street and he moves back with them and Marie in a "bigger house" (literally a larger version of the old shanty, complete with a ten foot tall front door) and they live happily ever after.

The characters include a variety of ethnic stereotypes: simple-minded rural blacks, redneck whites, Hispanic con artists, greedy Jews. However, the stereotypes are so blatant that their inclusion in the film should be considered the filmmakers' ironic comment on the evils of stereotyping.

An unsuccessful sequel, The Jerk, Too, was made for television with Mark Blankfield.

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