I saw this movie when it first came out—which occasions an
amusing anecdote, to be told at the end of this entry.
By the way, this review is not meant to be making any sly
comment about anything of current interest—in part because this film, itself,
was (and is) non-topical, seeming to exist in a world of absurdist imagination.
The Jerk was
comedian Steve Martin’s first feature film as an actor, after he had had
a stellar run as a standup comedian who could pack arenas in the 1970s (and he
had previously written for the Smothers Brothers’ late-’60s CBS show). A lot of
his comedy was a loopy sort involving such droll ideas and props as wearing a
fake archery arrow that seems to go through his head, and his part in the “wild
and crazy guys” routine he did with a regular troupe member (Dan Aykroyd?) on
NBC’s Saturday Night Live during its
late ’70s heyday.
In The Jerk,
Martin plays Navin Johnson, a white young man raised by a family of poor Black
sharecroppers or subsistence farmers in Mississippi—who is surprised to find
from his mother, in the film’s opening sequence, that he is adopted (through
tears, he is plaintive: “You mean I’m going to stay this color?”).
Thus begins a film that combines some in-your-face absurdist
humor, some of which skirts what might be called politically incorrect today;
Catskills humor/flavor (such as with the contribution made by Jackie Mason
and various gags by others throughout the film); and a sort of
couldn’t-care-less larky comic presentation that seems to blend the older-time
comedy sensibility of its director Carl Reiner with some echoing (not
always respectful) of the garishness of 1970s styles (especially among the
nouveau riche). In the same way, it touches on manners (especially among the
likes of carnival showpeople) and the randomly occurring crassness of the middle
class. (Some of the score seems as if the film was aimed about as much as older
viewers, say baby-boomers’ parents, as it was at the young—baby-boomers.)
There are a number of things to like about this film—if you
want simple guffaw-inducing humor that doesn’t have a whole lot of deep
socially-edifying qualities—though it tends to sag in its last one-third or so,
when it is more concerned then with rounding out its plot than in delivering
the density and often cleverness of the gags in its first half or so.
Navin is played as a simpleton given to ridiculous errors—this
is consistent with Martin’s previous standup absurdist/“crazy guy” stuff—who,
after he fixes a traveling salesman’s eyeglasses, enjoys the dumb luck of the
salesman parlaying the eyeglasses innovation into what becomes a tremendous nationwide
seller. When the salesman shares royalties with Navin, Navin becomes rich and
thus, if sounding less stupid, saunters around like a nouveau riche completely
lacking in true taste and good sense. Then Navin loses almost everything after
he is sued by consumers, spearheaded by Carl Reiner playing himself (“a
celebrity”), in a class action that prevails with the jury and judge showing
the same harm from Navin’s invention as do the plaintiffs.
I watched this film about three times recently, and have
seen it several times in the past—the very first time (in 1979) occasions a
funny anecdote—but it definitely wears thin after the first fun viewing. (I
mean this to be true in a given period;
if you watch it again years after you
first saw it, you might enjoy it anew; but then watch it immediately a second
time, and a fair amount of it falls flat.) On second (right after the first) viewing,
some of the gags induce impatience or embarrassment; and from a certain
perspective—you need not be as “social science”-oriented as I am—it would seem
to be in general poor taste insofar as it seems to poke fun, in Navin, at what
might be considered a mentally retarded man (or one with an unusual personality
disorder) (though Navin is something of a savant, able to invent
problem-solving “solutions” to such issues as eyeglasses that constantly slip
off a man’s head).
Navin deranged in
good times and bad, merely more dopey-suave when rich
Navin shows his odd qualities even when, with his own home,
he’s become rich and has a girlfriend who is truly such for him (because she
actually kisses him, unlike his first girlfriend, a slovenly carnival
motorcycle-stunt person whose sequences are black-comic and, at times,
amusingly exemplify, in their rude way, the kind of “comedy of manners for the
middle class” that you don’t really see in movies anymore). At one point, Navin
is in a bathtub calling out to his girlfriend, played by Bernadette Peters, who is (unseen by him) tearfully writing him a goodbye note; and at one
point he sings her a song he says he wrote for her that morning, including the
lyrics “I’m picking out a thermos / for you…” and ends with the lyric “and a
rear-end thermometer, too.”
A lot of this is the kind of pointless humor you can see
certain varieties of wild-comic romps today, but without the kind of socially
rooted (if not political-point-type) premises—which embody some ideas that
would be “politically incorrect” today—that may make this film edgy. In line with the ’70s social bearings, this film
has parts that maybe (for some) are tolerable for one viewing (and
take-you-by-surprise hilarious for others), but are dated and tacky on a more
considered reflection by a wider range of viewers.
In terms of “wild and crazy” characters, Jim Carrey’s Ace
Ventura, from films in 1994 and 1995, may appeal more today, and not simply
because of the manic verve and constant sense of zany fun Carrey brings to the
role, but because the character seems less identifiable as “the type of people
we try not to laugh at”—such as a mentally retarded person (developmentally disabled is the term
today) as is the possible case with Navin. Ace more entertains us simply
because he is both energetically wackiness-delivering and simply weird.
The race aspect
One thing that barely skirts being offensive in The Jerk, perhaps, is the premise of
Navin’s adopted family being a big set of poor Black sharecroppers, complete
with a rousing singalong, on the dilapidated front porch, of the old
folk/field-call tune “Pick a Bail of Cotton” (performed by blues musician Huddie
Ledbetter [i.e., “Lead Belly”], according to film credits). But I admit
that this is to me, in one respect—especially for the fun-Americana aspect of
the music)—one of the more enjoyable sequences; and as drives home the
tongue-in-cheek aspect of this, versions of the porch/music scene, with “grace
notes of self-awareness,” come at both ends of the film. I can see how some
modern Blacks may feel the sequence is—or somewhat dangerously skirts—an
exploitative, dated depiction (rather as if an Amos ’n’ Andy sequence was
shown). But I would point out how this particular sequence is presented as
absurdist, playing off some goofy stereotypes that were even recognized as such
in 1979.
Meanwhile—with a fair amount of the gags playing off the “whitebread”
air that Martin has/had in a way—the joke that Navin “doesn’t have rhythm” when
it comes to the Black music, but does
have rhythm when some Muzak-like stuff is floating in on the radio (and this
inspires him to seek his fortune in the outer world), may more decisively seem
either OK but dated; or forced; or ugly; or trite.
But one thing that clues me off to how the larger sharecropper
sequence is dreamed up, and performed, as tongue-in-cheek is that the Black
performers seem to be having fun with it. They include, as the mother, Mabel King, who had roles on TV now and then; and Dick Anthony Williams,
who is Navin’s oldest brother Taj. Taj has such incisive moments as sputtering
into laughing/coughing on having heard one of Navin’s letters home read aloud
by the grandmother, with its references to sexual crassness that Navin
innocently reports that also seems to go over the grandmother’s head, but not
over Taj’s.
My favorite gag
My favorite gag in The
Jerk is when Navin’s adoptive father, played by gravel-voiced Richard Ward,
is outdoors with him, about to show him the difference between shit and Shinola
(the shoe polish). This plays on the old expression, if you never heard it, of
“He doesn’t know the difference between shit and Shinola.” The father patiently
points out which is shit (on the ground), and which is Shinola (in a can in his
hand). Navin acknowledges he gets it, as if learning a genuine lesson. “Boy,
you’re going to be all right!” the father says approvingly, and they walk on.
In their first steps, Navin steps squarely in the shit.
I’ve liked this gag because it seems to reflect a truth you
see a little too often in life: point out to someone the difference between
shit and Shinola, and they may say they get it, but then they step in the shit.
Big-time.
Some fun sequences
A couple sequences have a lot of fun moments. The long
sequence at the gas station, whose owner is Mr. Hartounian, played by Jackie
Mason, has the most fun—and the least stupid—gags per sequence; and this
location is where Navin concocts his eyeglasses invention (for a salesman
played by Bill Macy, of Maude
fame) that eventually gets him rich and later gives this peripatetic film some
semblance of a plot.
(Mr. Hartounian’s wife is dressed and made up to look like a
tacky ’70s version of an unusually nubile trophy wife. Ironically, she looks
fairly much like the main actresses of today’s film American Hustle, with her teats half hanging out of her dress.
Actually, I don’t think too many women dressed quite that way in the ’70s—maybe
the Studio 54 types [and miscellaneous trampy sorts] did. But you should
remember that even if the ’70s today seem like a time of tastelessness in
fashion and self-comportment, there actually still was [among some] a sense of
propriety and good taste, while there was a lack thereof among others; and the
good taste wasn’t simply among who would become Jerry Falwell’s followers in the
next decade.)
There is also a sequence that some might shudder at today,
when a sniper with a high-powered rifle turns up on the bank across from the
gas station and tries to kill Navin, after having randomly found Navin’s name
in the phone book. Played by M. Emmet Walsh, the sniper later turns up,
apparently reformed, as a private investigator who tracks Navin down to give
him a letter from the traveling salesman who is going to make him rich.
Another fun sequence is when Navin is with his first
girlfriend, the motorcycle stunt person, in her trailor…and if you don’t want
yourself or loved ones to witness crude sexual humor (but nothing terribly
graphic), this may be what triggers your saying “Not for me” to this film.
I was almost sad recently to find that Maurice Evans is in this film, as Navin’s properly British-flavored butler Hobart when Navin
is rich. Evans, you may know, played Hutch in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and had a distinguished career that included
Shakespearean work.
Carl Gottlieb, who was one of the writers and actors
for Jaws (1975; see my review a few
entries back), was also a cowriter and actor within The Jerk.
An old autobio bit
The anecdote from 1979 is simply this: That year, I was
becoming a discriminating filmgoer for the first time. The year saw the release
of Kramer vs. Kramer, Apocalypse Now,
and others; The Shining would be the
next year. In retrospect, it seems to have been a good time for young viewers
to cut their “film critic’s teeth” on new films; and even at the time, from my
own 17-year-old perspective, it rather seemed a time of often-good cinema, too.
When I first went to see The
Jerk, for some reason I went by myself (I usually went with others, like my
friend Joe Coles [and others] or my sister). I went to a movie theater at the
Preakness Mall in Wayne Township (only locals would know where that is). I sat
through maybe about 25 minutes of the film, and got up and left, as if in distaste
at the film. That was the first time, and I think the last, I ever did that—in a
theater (where you paid good money)—with a film I hadn’t seen before and would
normally have seen in its entirety. When I told Joe Coles about this, he seemed
impressed I had done this—and I don’t recall whether he took it as reflecting
the quality of the film or something about me. I think the former.
I guess the point today is that, if to modern viewers The Jerk seems to sputter into
tastelessness or near-pointlessness at times, it did in 1979 too, even if I
wasn’t the acme of film criticism as a 17-year-old viewer.
