Carl Reiner directs Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and M. Emmet Walsh in this rags to riches to rags comedy about Navin, a naive white man “born a poor black child” making his way in the big bad world.

Zany is hard to do. This classic makes it seem deceptively easy. Like The Marx Brothers with A Day at the Races, Martin built his debut lead vehicle around wacky routines that had already earned their keep in live shows for over a decade. It makes for one of the most quotable, most intelligently daft movies ever made. A veritable Citizen Kane, in both plot and scope, of madcap. Steve Martin and Carl Reiner’s aim when translating his stand up gold was to have one killer gag per page. And it shows. Unlike Airplane which has a chuck enough shit against the wall attitude, The Jerk doesn’t always pummel you into laugh submission relentlessly. There’s time outs for sweet moments, bleak moments, moments that are tonally bewildering but no less captivating or amusing. Straight faced beachside ukulele serenades sit next to heartless disco vulgar excess. Bernadette Peters helps the off kilter tone. Vapid without being saccharine, wholesome while staying attractive… there’s something palpably unnerving about her Dear John exit, her unavoidable corruption by The Jerk’s outrageous fortune. It is powerful discordant notes like her performance that stop The Jerk from merely being a cash-in on Steve Martin’s cult popularity and raise it above most dumb spoofs. There’s seems to be real heart and risk in the choices made. Candide was an influence, giving us a film that invokes Voltaire but never feels sneeringly highbrow. Which is to say it is never in any way inaccessible to those just wanting fun. It is consistently a rollicking joke fest were Martin dances painfully out of rhythm, chases a runaway miniature railway and Shithead the dog steals many, many scenes. But to accuse The Jerk of being throwaway, its contemporary reputation, is shortsighted. It is a tight comedy with very little waste. Early doors set-ups are revisited for even better jokes entire acts later, in fact there’s a gleeful, ambitious narrative symmetry to the whole endeavour. And Martin as sweet, pig shit thick, greedy Navin is a delight… selling even the stupidest yucks with a breezy assuredness. It is his movie, virulent with his honed comedy persona, and that’s what makes it so unique. High status goof-off heaven.

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