Synopsis
The Jerk (1979) is a Carl Reiner comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Navin Johnson, raised by a family of Black sharecroppers, is genuinely stunned to learn he was adopted. So the sweet-natured simpleton packs up and heads off to find himself a real place in the world.
What follows is a rags-to-riches-to-rags ride. Navin stumbles into inventing a goofy little gadget that keeps eyeglasses from slipping, and the money pours in. He falls for Marie (Bernadette Peters), buys a mansion, loses his head to wealth, then loses the fortune just as fast. Steve Martin, in his first leading film role, plays it all with such wide-eyed innocence that the dumb gags somehow land as oddly tender.
The picture turned Martin from a stand-up act into a movie star, and he co-wrote the script himself. The bit about the new phone book arriving has outlived the film by decades. The humor is proudly stupid and absurd, with no hidden depth, which for the right crowd is exactly the appeal. Stream The Jerk (1979) online on iFILM.
Starring
Comments 0