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The Jerk Reviews

The Jerk is uneven with a capital U.

Full Review | Jan 17, 2024

…doesn’t tick the boxes required of a rounded drama, but it’s hard to complain when so many gags land…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2023

Every scene offers something funny; every scene subverts expectations.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 22, 2022

With comedy legend Carl Reiner directing and unforgettable supporting roles from Jackie Mason and Bernadette Peters, the result is an incredible mix of barbed satire, silly pratfalls, and, at its core, sweetness.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 14, 2021

There are some heavenly jokes (especially the one where he makes a fortune inventing an absurd nose support for spectacles), and Martin is in best "manic" mode.

The verbal and conceptual gags... belong wholly to Martin's own brand of goofiness, and some of them are pretty funny.

Full Review | Mar 14, 2021

This is Martin at his absolute silliest, and therefore most brilliant.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Mar 14, 2021

The ingenious thing about this film is the way it can take serious situations and drastically interfere with them using an unexpected comedy device.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 30, 2020

Carl Reiner, who has made his own contributions to comedy with Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke, does little to set a mood or rhythm or even an aura of good feeling that will carry audiences over the slow spots.

Full Review | Jul 19, 2019

It's just a strange little movie.

Full Review | Apr 12, 2019

Basically a series of skits that are barely tethered to a plot, this works better than expected, thanks primarily to Martin's infectious performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 22, 2018

Bernadette Peters...nearly steals the show from Martin's over-the-top antics. It's sweet, and funny, and includes one of the most quotable exit lines in film history.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2018

Within ts limitations, The Jerk is a capably produced entertainment, seasoned by deft bit performances from several actors...

Full Review | Apr 24, 2018

An oddball odyssey so strange, filled with non-sequiturs so funny, and decorated by a romance so sweet, it was an inevitable star-maker.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 12, 2012

92 minutes of direct and sweet surrealism

Full Review | Feb 13, 2010

Its humor is successful and unsuccessful by turns, and although Comedian Carl Reiner is the director, the instinct here is to give most of both credit and blame to Martin.

Full Review | Feb 2, 2009

An artless, non-stop barrage of off-the-wall situations, funny and unfunny jokes, generally effective and sometimes hilarious sight gags and bawdy non sequiturs.

If only he could have satisfied himself with this area of expertise, people would still talk of Steve Martin as one of the kings of comic cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 2, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 18, 2007

The comedy runs out of steam when the jerk makes good, but laugh for laugh it's probably a better investment than 10.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

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The Jerk: No 24 best comedy film of all time

S teve Martin has often said that while his film career doesn't add up to many classics, it would make a great selection of clips. He's being a tad tough on himself, but if you were to assemble such a selection, chances are that most of the clips would be from The Jerk.

Martin's first starring role had him playing an adopted white man in a poor family, oblivious to his unusual heritage – "You mean I'm gonna stay this colour?" – who embarks on a picaresque series of adventures. As Navin Johnson, he travels the road, joins a circus, even becomes a rich inventor of a doomed glasses-handling device (The Opti-Grab).

Made at a time when most comedies tried to make their lead seem cool and hip, Martin went the other way, embracing dumb humour and raising it to an art form. There's nothing too stupid for Martin to say – "A cosmetologist? Really? Wow. Must be tough to handle the weightlessness."

Like Woody Allen's Take The Money and Run, The Jerk is basically designed to allow Martin to use as many of his standup jokes and routines as possible, but his charm and timing makes this cleverly constructed movie seem fantastically loose and easy.

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Steve Martin's debut movie "The Jerk" as the lead went on to become the third biggest hit of 1979 in the US. This box office approval was not reflected in the largely venomous reviews of the time. Viewed today, it's a film that resembles a mix between " Airplane "-style gags and an early watered down version of the crude comedy the Farrelly Brothers would later take to new extremes.

Living out in the sticks in a ramshackle house, Martin is a pretty simple fellow to put it politely. He's the only white member of a huge black family and his shock at discovering that he's not a natural child comes as a major blow. These opening scenes contain some of the better jokes, and Martin's inability to keep to the rhythm of the family sing-songs is amusing.

Realising that he doesn't know anything about his real background, Martin decides to head for the big city. There he gets a job as a gas station attendant that curiously results in a part of a church getting demolished. This type of visual humour is an example of what works best in an otherwise patchy and dated film.

More opportunities for slapstick keep things moving along, including Martin becoming an amusement park train driver, falling in love with a female motorcycle racer, and outwitting a deranged killer. The undoubted highlight of the movie though is the cat-juggling scene.

Unfortunately after that, things start to get a little strained and the movie struggles once Martin's character encounters financial fortune. This translated into real life to, with the box office success of the film prompting Martin to produce an unsuccessful TV feature remake that formed the pilot for a series that never got made.

Read a review of the DVD .

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The Jerk Review

27 Jun 1980

Born the son of poor black sharecroppers, Navin Johnson sets off to seek his fortune in the big wide world. Initially he doesn't get further than the end of the fence, but eventually he finds employment at a gas station, becomes the target for a crazed psycho-killer (the splendid M Emmet Walsh), finds out about his "special purpose" from a female circus daredevil motorbike rider, realises true love with Bernadette Peters, and finds fame and fortune through his brilliant invention, the Optigrab.

Loud and ludicrous, The Jerk is a strong contender for the funniest film of all time.

Movies | 30 06 2020

"We waste our money so you don't have to."

"We waste our money, so you don't have to."

Movie Review

US Release Date: 12-14-1979

Directed by: Carl Reiner

Starring ▸ ▾

Steve Martin , as
Navin R. Johnson / Cat Juggler
Bernadette Peters , as
Marie Kimble Johnson
M. Emmet Walsh , as
Jackie Mason , as
Harry Hartounian
Dick O'Neill , as
Mabel King , as
Richard Ward , as
Dick Anthony Williams , as
Bill Macy , as
Catlin Adams , as
Patty Bernstein
Maurice Evans , as
Helena Carroll , as
Ren Woods , as
Elvira Jonson
Carl Gottlieb , as
Iron Balls McGinty
Carl Reiner , as
Rob Reiner , as
Truck driver picking up Navin
Larry Hankin as
Circus hand

Steve Martin is The Jerk .

When Steve Martin, Carl Gottlieb and Michael Elias were writing the screenplay for The Jerk , their stated goal was to include at least one joke on every page. I think it's safe to say they succeeded. The result, directed by comedy genius Carl Reiner, is one of the silliest, most joke-filled, whimsical motion picture farces ever made. Steve Martin, in his first starring role, proved himself one of the greats in terms of physical comedy, and in Navin R. Johnson he created an indelibly lovable and truly original screen character.

This is a classic American rags to riches (to rags - as the tagline claimed) story with a plot that would have suited Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd – only with a 1970's twist. The movie begins with Martin, as a bum in an alley, narrating his story directly to the camera. This opening speech includes one of the most famous lines in film comedy, “I was born a poor black child.” Raised by black sharecroppers in Mississippi, Navin learns he's adopted as he prepares to head out in search of his fortune. His first reaction is, “You mean I'm gonna STAY this color?” Armed with advice from his family, “Lord loves a workin' man; don't trust whitey; see a doctor and get rid of it.” Navin takes to the road wearing a WWII bomber helmet and goggles.

Navin has many adventures along the way. He works at a gas station and gets shot at by a madman who randomly picked his name from a phone book. Then he winds up being the “guess your weight” guy at a traveling carnival where he learns what his “special purpose” (his mother's euphemism for his penis) is for. Everything changes when he meets Marie (Bernadette Peters). When she tells him she's a cosmetologist, Navin excitedly responds, “Really? A cosmetologist? That's unbelievable. That's impressive. Must be tough handling the weightlessness.”

Together Navin and Marie (and Navin's dog Shithead) experience ups and downs as their story heads towards its happy ending. Another of my favorite jokes happens when Navin asks a sad looking Marie, “Why are you crying? And why are you wearing that old dress?” She answers, “Because I just heard a song on the radio that reminded me of the way we were.” “What was it?” “"The Way We Were."”

For all its silliness and politically incorrect humor, The Jerk contains a surprising amount of heart. The relationship between Navin and his family is played for laughs but it's also shown to be genuine. And the romance between Navin and Marie is sweetly sincere. In one memorable scene they duet on "Tonight You Belong to Me" while strolling along the beach at night.

The Jerk was the first of four movies Steve Martin would star in for director Carl Reiner. It was followed by Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983) and All of Me (1984). As good as those other three movies are, I still prefer their first collaboration. The Jerk was a huge hit in 1979 and nearly 40 years later it remains one of the funniest movies of all time.

Steve Martin in The Jerk .

The idea for this movie came from the line Patrick mentioned, "I was born a poor black child.", which Martin used in his surreal standup routine and the script grew from that. (Watching it in the Spring of 2015 I couldn't help but wonder if this was Rachel Dolezal's favorite film as a child?) The script also contains other items from Martin's standup routine, including the kitten juggling, and the emotional exit wherein he claims to not need anything, except for the few household objects he picks up along the way.

Although he'd appeared in a few films, and guest hosted Saturday Night Live several times, Martin was known mainly as a standup performer before this film came out. He began his career as a writer, before moving into standup, but has stated that it was always his goal to become an actor. In fact, despite million selling comedy albums and stadium sized tours, he would abandon standup for good in 1981. From today's perspective this can be seen as a smart move. His anarchic standup routine, and immensely popular King Tut song, haven't aged particularly well, while The Jerk is, as Patrick said, just as funny today as it was when it was released.

The comparison to a silent film starring Lloyd or especially Keaton is an apt one. Often those old silent two-reelers felt more like a series of surreal events than one cohesive plot, so does this movie. And the plot, despite all the silly shenanigans, is the oldest one in Hollywood in which boy meets, loses, and gets girl (along with wealth). Really, it's a rags to riches to rags to riches again story. And like those old silent movies, the only goal of this movie is to make you laugh. It's completely and utterly silly and that's all it wants to be. There's no deeper meaning here. It's all about the comedy.

I also agree with Patrick that Martin is loveable as Navin. It's his naive optimism that makes him that way. The smallest things can make him happy, like getting his name in the phone book, or a bamboo umbrella in his drink. He's a total idiot of course, but you can't help but root for him. Martin has given more dramatic performances since this one, but he's never been more likable.

There are too many great and funny scenes to mention, but I will just quote one of the exchanges that made me laugh the most on this watching. Navin: "I know this is our first date but... do you think, the next time you make love to your boyfriend, you could think of me?" Marie: "Well, I haven't made love to him yet." Navin: "That's too bad... Do you think it's possible that someday, you could make love with me and think of him?" Marie: "Who knows, maybe you and he could make love and you could think of me." Navin: "I'd just be happy to be in there somewhere."

Clocking in at barely 90 minutes, The Jerk is a very silly, comedy classic.

Bernadette Peters in The Jerk

As my brothers wrote, the true secret to the success of The Jerk is the likability of Steve Martin as Navin R. Johnson. Sure, the film is full of laughs and memorable lines but it is Navin’s naïve optimism that keeps us rooting for him through his ridiculous adventures. My brothers were reminded of silent film clowns while I kept thinking of James Stewart in Harvey (1950). Not since Elwood P. Dowd had there been such an instantly lovable, yet mentally questionable, character. Like Elwood, Navin has strong family relations and accepts everything he is told as a truth, whether it is or not. Both are full of heart and always seem to see the good in everyone.

Although I remembered her cleavage scene in the restaurant (see photo), I did not recall just how attractive Bernadette Peters was here. She shows her legs off in the disco scene and her midriff in the knife throwing one. Not only is she as cute as can be, but she holds her own against Martin with the comedy. When Navin tells Marie, “I'm gonna bounce back and when I do I'm gonna buy you a diamond so big it's gonna make you puke.” Marie adorably pouts and complains, “I don't wanna puke.” Like Patrick, I enjoyed the duet with Martin and, of course, her trumpet playing.

Although I agree with Scott that the film’s goal is simply to make you laugh, I did find that it makes an interesting observation. Navin is born a poor child of a sharecropper and thus has no clue what sophistication is. The mansion he buys is decorated like a Middle Eastern whore house. He thinks he needs to have an umbrella in all of his drinks because he saw a man in a magazine advertisement with one in his (see photo on Scott's review). I kept thinking of rappers from the 1980s when Marie gives Navin another gold chain. Like poor ghetto musicians making lots of money, he wore his wealth around his neck for all to see. Did Steve Martin start that gaudy trend? The scene of Navin doing karate while surrounded by a bunch of yes men on his mansion grounds reminded me of that poor kid from Tupelo, Mississippi who grew to be an icon and thought he could do martial arts because his entourage said he could.

Like silent film comedies or the three stooges, the humor in The Jerk has aged quite well. Little about it makes you think of the 1970s. You cannot help but root for this hapless go lucky underdog. He often seems mentally deficient but his heart is always in the right place as he makes you hurt from laughter.

Photos © Copyright Universal Pictures (1979)

Reader's Choice

Reviews commissioned and selected by Patrons

Review by Brian Eggert February 2, 2020

The Jerk yearns for great stupidity. Its rags to riches (then to rags and riches again) story is merely a framework on which to hang jokes. If pressed, one could draw some lesson about the dangers of hubris from the journey of Steve Martin’s idiotic Navin Johnson, an inexperienced man-child whose desire to “be somebody” brings about his undoing. His overjoyed reaction to the “spontaneous publicity” of the phonebook leads to a murderous crackpot selecting Navin’s name at random for termination; his unexpected success with the Opti-Grab glasses handle results in his financial ruin when its cross-eyed users file a class-action lawsuit. But The Jerk is no moralizing tale of vanity gone wrong—well, it is , but that’s not why it exists. Alongside director Carl Reiner, Martin delivers a pure joke machine, 95 minutes of laughter without consequence or emotional resonance. Although it would be easy to view its lack of compelling characters or deep-seated emotions as a failing, it begs the viewer to assess how they want their humor: Should a comedy that produces only laughter be considered a successful movie? Or must a comedy be character-driven with relatable situations and emotional consequences? There’s no right answer. And on most days, I would gravitate toward the latter mode, except on days that I’m watching The Jerk .

Comedy is subjective. What one person finds funny, another may not. Reviewing a comedy, then, can become a tedious, if challenging exercise in trying to convey funny moments from the movie for the reader in hopes that they, too, will find them funny. You can cite examples or describe the methods used, noting whether it was witty or screwball, dry or raunchy, slapstick or understated. But that doesn’t explain why it’s funny or why you laughed . The laughter comes from within, like a reflex. There’s no intellectualizing laughter. It either makes you laugh or doesn’t. Moreover, there are only so many synonyms for “funny,” only so many ways you can describe the end result. But you can describe its sense of humor, the structure of its jokes. The Jerk makes this process somewhat more straightforward, as there’s a philosophy behind the film’s brand of comedy, driven by Martin’s strategic approach that’s informed by his interest in philosophy. Before he became an entertainer, Martin had studied philosophy at Long Beach State University and even considered teaching; instead, he used what he had learned about the human mind to develop a new kind of humor that transgressed the usual expectations associated with comedic performance. After several years honing his material on the stage and television, The Jerk became Martin’s first creative project on film, and in many ways, it’s the purest expression of his humor from this period.

The structure of this central joke emerged out of Martin’s stand up routine. It was the basis of one of his most famous characters from the period, one of two Czechoslovakian “Wild and Crazy Guys” alongside Dan Aykroyd—an overconfident “swinging sex god” who could make love “up to one time per night.” In the early 1970s, Martin had developed a stage persona that used such ironies to play against the traditional stand-up method of developing segues that allow transitions from one joke to the next. Martin wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “In a college psychology class, I had read a treatise on comedy explaining that a laugh was formed when the storyteller created tension, then, with the punch line, released it.” Martin developed a style that resisted punch lines and instead required his audience to observe and decide for themselves: What is the joke? More than a story with a clear comic conclusion, Martin requires observation, assessment, and involvement in a comic scene. We laugh at his body language, the wrongness of his character’s assumptions, the backwardness of his thinking, and his ability to catch us off guard. It’s a notion captured in the opening lines of The Jerk , lines taken from Martin’s act: “I was born a poor black child.” Wait, what ?

Martin had been branded a complete original in the 1970s, far removed from the usual schtick of his contemporaries. After years of writing material for variety shows such as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s, he went on to become a slowly emergent start as a stage performer. But his celebrity skyrocketed after his first hosting gig on Saturday Night Live . Almost overnight, he went from performing at small clubs to selling out large venues. He would host SNL several times a year in the 1970s, each time earning a higher rating for the show than any other host. However, 1977 was arguably the year that solidified Steve Martin in the national consciousness. He appeared on SNL three times, made stand-up appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and other variety shows, and sold millions of copies of his best-selling album Let’s Get Small . He wrote a book of essays and comic stories, called Cruel Shoes , which also became a best-seller. He was everywhere, except in the cinema. Sure, he appeared in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and played a waiter in The Muppet Movie , but Martin wanted a showcase for his talent and distinct brand of humor.

The Jerk wrapped shooting under budget and three weeks early, but its release wasn’t so smooth. Early test screenings in Los Angeles were disastrous, while Midwest previews were overwhelmingly positive. There was no consensus as to whether the film was stupid, or so stupid that it was brilliant. Of course, that was the joke. Accordingly, Reiner promoted the film with a similar strain of irony. He held a fashionable world premiere, complete with limos, spotlights, and red carpet interviews, but not for the full film—for the trailer . It was a daring publicity stunt and practical joke played on a crowd unaware they were about to see a three-minute reduction of The Jerk , not the full feature. Speaking to a packed house of expectant viewers, Reiner praised the film for coming in “$94 under budget,” while Martin also introduced the trailer. Once the three minutes were over, the theater was cleared. The audience’s interest, at least, was assured. The Jerk opened on December 14, 1979, and earned more than $70 million at the U.S. box-office, no thanks to critics. Most journalists complained about the film’s concentration on gags instead of character-driven humor. Roger Ebert wrote, “There’s no plot point to be made, and nothing is being said about his character—except, of course, that he’s a jerk.” Richard Corliss in Time called it a “lacklustre feature film debut” for Martin, complaining that Reiner “does little to set a mood or rhythm or even an aura of good feeling that will carry audiences over the slow spots.”

It’s understandable why most critics couldn’t connect. The Jerk tells much of its story from the outside-in, aligning with the perspectives of other characters who interact with Navin. We observe him like we would a test subject, waiting for the next laugh. Reiner adds to this effect when he cuts to the faces of Richard Ward or Dick Anthony Williams, playing Navin’s father and uncle, or gas station owner Mr. Hartounian (Jackie Mason), as their inward expressions suggest their awareness of Navin’s stupidity. Instead of relating to Navin, the film prefers to laugh at him, leaving its perspective with the viewer or other characters in the scene. Martin and Reiner extend this approach from out of Martin’s stand-up routine, where it’s up to the audience to observe and locate the humor for themselves.

Sometimes the jokes are unmistakable, such as when Navin realizes that his job at the carnival is “a profit deal,” or when Navin and his wife Marie (Bernadette Peters, Martin’s real-life significant other at the time) dine at an expensive French restaurant as a member of the nouveau riche . Navin asks for this year’s wine, “none of that old stuff,” then complains when Marie finds snails on her plate of escargot. Other jokes require the viewer to decide whether there’s a joke present at all—consider the conversation around pizza in a cup. Elsewhere, the simple humor of cross-eyed Opti-Grab users or Navin’s discovery of his “special purpose” might seem petty, but they are no less funny. Martin also injects more thoughtful moments, such as the brilliantly improvised sequence of Navin explaining, “I know we’ve only known each other for four weeks and three days, but to me, it seems like nine weeks and five days.” Indeed, The Jerk has sustained its legacy by being endlessly quotable and timeless in its humor.

Although the film uses a few cringe-worthy stereotypes to portray Navin’s family dancing on a porch and singing “Pick a Bale of Cotton,” or Navin’s use of the N-word to defend the honor of his family, the film also strives to identify with the black perspective and ridicule whiteness. To be sure, whiteness is something to be laughed at in The Jerk . Navin has no rhythm except with generic muzak (“If this is out there, just imagine what else is out there!”) and prefers his sandwiches wrapped in cellophane. He doesn’t want to listen to blues music because “There’s something about those songs. They depress me.” Whiteness for Navin amounts to difference, and the film could be seen as identifying with the black perspective to achieve this, though the film’s assessment of blackness derives from stereotypes. Navin’s father’s advice, “Don’t trust whitey,” is a source of ironic humor, but it also reveals something about his family’s subjectivity. There are layers of irony to disentangle in The Jerk ’s use of race, and it walks a fine line between cultural appreciation and appropriation that never quite resolves itself.

Martin would explore more sophisticated modes of humor in the subsequent decades, from the wittily satirical L.A. Story (1991) to his various Broadway plays and performances, to his later writings on the nature of comedy. If The Jerk is an extension of Martin’s 1970s stand-up routine, it seems almost archaic given the number of times Martin has reinvented himself over the years—the very quality that has sustained his presence as an entertainer for five decades. Even so, The Jerk remains a purely funny experience, and I fear that in my enduring love of the film, I may have succumbed to simply listing my favorite moments in this review, even if I overlooked the “That’s all I need” downswing, the “He hates these cans!” sequence, or the “Picking Out a Thermos” song. Hopefully, the reader can forgive both my enthusiasm and my limited ability to recount every last joke. But after seeing the film countless times, from its continuous presence on cable television throughout the 1980s and 1990s to more recent viewings, it still makes me laugh. Every scene offers something funny; every scene subverts expectations. Even the single moment of genuine tenderness, when Martin and Peters sing their warmhearted rendition of “Tonight You Belong to Me,” transitions into an awkwardness that betrays an otherwise romantic moment. The Jerk does the unexpected or opposite of what it should, and its humor continues to feel fresh in its willingness to embrace an uncommon stupidity.

(Note: This review was suggested and commissioned on Patreon by Dustin. Thanks for your support! )

Bibliography

De Semlyen, Nick. Wild and Crazy Guys: How the Comedy Mavericks of the ’80s Changed Hollywood Forever . Penguin Random House LLC, 2019.

Martin, Steve. “Being Funny.” Smithsonian Magazine . February 2008. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/being-funny-17061140/. Accessed 28 January 2020.

Martin, Steve. Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life . Scribner, 2007.

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Classic Movie Review – The Jerk (1979)

Always remember these three important rules of life, 3.5 readers:

#1 – Don’t trust Whitey.

#2 – The Lord loves a working man.

#3 – See a doctor and get rid of it.

BQB here with a review of this classic comedy of Steve Martin’s most hilarious film.

NOTE: This is a review for people who have seen the movie. Ergo, if you want no SPOILERS, look away. Go watch then come back.

I saw this movie on a list of films that couldn’t be remade today. I instantly remembered how much it made me laugh back in the day and had to rewatch it again. I’m not sure what that list was talking about because I would argue this is a rare comedy that has stood the test of time, 43 years in fact.

The premise? Steve Martin, in his first major film role, plays Navin Johnson, the white son of African American sharecroppers in Mississippi. He loves his family and they love him, but on one fateful birthday, he, to his shock, discovers that he is white (yes, even though he is well into his thirties.)

Navin’s mother explains that the family adopted him when he was left on their doorstep as a baby and raised him as one of their own. Realizing that he isn’t getting younger, Navin decides he must venture forth from the family homestead and out into the world, seeking to find fame and fortune of his very own.

From there, the flick is a string of skits and gags, all surrounding Navin’s adventure into the great unknown, with cameos by various stars of the day helping or hindering him as the case may be.

Back in the day, Roger Ebert gave this film 2 stars. You can read that review here:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-jerk-1979

Now, here’s the thing. I admire Ebert because he built a great career doing what I love, namely, watching and picking apart movies. He’s the Mike Tyson of movie critics. So far be it from me to criticize him, but I think he got this one wrong.

As Ebert argues, comedy is subjective (so if he didn’t find it funny then I suppose in his view he wasn’t wrong). He goes on to explain there is funny for the sake of funny and situational funny. He goes on to say sometimes a character wears a funny hat and that’s the joke and sometimes there’s a silly situation that requires the character to wear a funny hat. The latter, according to Ebert, is way funnier.

Thus, to our veteran critic, Martin is all hat and no cattle, just a doofus doing doofusy things. Truly, he did and one might say he’s a pioneer of screwball comedy, making silly faces long before Jim Carrey.

However, what I believe Ebert missed is this film is one great big allegory for the fallout that occurs when youthful (or even not so youthful), naive optimism crashes into cold, hard reality. Forget Dr. Seus’s “Oh, the Places You Will Go!” Every high school graduate should get a copy of The Jerk.

Think about it. The high school grad thinks they’ve got the world by the horns when they head off to college. They think they know everything. Then they encounter the lousy roommate, the demanding professor, the first boss who dresses them down over a mistake. The student loan payments are due and the job interviews are going nowhere. I did all this studying to be a barista? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Compare this with Navin’s mistake filled journey. Navin is full of uninformed assumptions that blow up in his face due to his lack of experience. Navin thinks he’ll easily hitchhike across the USA, only to stand in front of his family’s home all day, well into the night. Navin gets a job at a gas station and thinks he’s hoodwinked a crook by tying said fraudster’s car to a church, only for the ne’er-do-well to take off down the drown dragging half the church, guests at a wedding still inside, behind him.

Navin is overjoyed when he is listed in the phone book, only for a homicidal maniac to pick his name at random and go on a murderous rampage against him. Navin joins a carnival, meets Patty the slovenly, over-sexed motorbiked stuntwoman and assumes he has found a ticket to free, no strings attached sex, only to discover that Patty is so attached she’s willing to commit violence to keep him.

The Navester comes on too strong with love interest Marie and she bolts. He invents the opti-grab grip eyeglass attachment that makes him a billionaire, only to be bankrupted by a lawsuit from irate customers when the product makes them go cross-eyed.

Bottomline – In life, mistakes are guaranteed. You think you won’t make them, but it’s not a matter of if you’ll make them but when. You’ll make assumptions. You’ll make decisions. Your actions will blow up in your face. You can fall apart and give up, or you can learn from your mistakes, vow not to repeat them and do better.

Had Navin not been such a dum-dum, he might have seen many lessons in his mistakes. He should have walked out to a main road to hitchhike, or heck, earned some money to buy a bus ticket. He should have left to crook to the cops. Not all publicity is good. Don’t have sex with someone you don’t want to commit to lest you hurt their feelings. If you sell a product, make sure you test it first.

Yes, wide-eyed, unbridled optism will surely always crash against the hard wall of reality, but all you can do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off, figure out what you did wrong and not do it again.

In the end, the only lesson Navin learned is home is where the heart is. Sometimes, the greatness we seek is right in our own backyard, coming to us in the form of the people who love us the most, that we love in return. When Navin hits Skid Row, it’s his sharecropper family who find him, clean him up, and bring him back to the place he thrived the most, and an ending credit scene where he dances while his family sings shows us he couldn’t be happier.

Two cringeworthy things that don’t fit today’s modern wokeness. 1 Is when a group of mafiosos use the N word, Navin defends his family’s honor in perhaps the funniest bit of the film when he says, “Sir, you are talking to an n-word!” then magically channels the spirit of a kung-fu warrior as he kicks the asses of all the racist single handed (with the exception of Iron Balls McGinty.)

I would argue this joke gets a pass due to context. Navin loves his family so much. His love for them is the sweetest part of the movie and perhaps the most redeeming quality of an otherwise dimwitted dullard. The n word is only used to pave the way for a bit in which a man who loves his family kung-fus a bunch of racists into thinking twice about saying such nasty slurs. But ok, context is a dead concept when it comes to humor now, so this joke doesn’t hold up.

Second, the family at the end sings “Pick a Bale of Cotton,” a song that references slavery days. All are so happy as the family sings and plays instruments while Navin dances joyously to celebrate his return home for good. In context, one might remember that in slavery times, slaves sang such songs to keep their spirits up when forced against their will to do punishing labor. In 1979, there were no slaves alive but it is possible that Navin’s father, given the time period, might have, as a child, known an old person or two who lived with slavery times or even was a slave. I assume the point of the film was the family is singing a song that was passed down through the generations of their family though yeah, it surely would have been better if the family had sung a happier, less racially charged song.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. When I was a kid, I just thought Steve Martin was a doofus doing doofy things in this film. As an adult, I see it as a silly growing up tale, teaching young as well as old that whenever they take on a new encounter, they will inevitably make mistakes, fall on their face, have to pick themselves up and try, try again. In the end, the only real losers are those who keep making the same mistake over and over.

I do think this is a rare old comedy that holds up in modern times, save for two scenes that don’t keep with modern woke standards. I’m not saying “give it a pass” but if you consider context and intent, the scenes were meant to show a white man who loves his black family so much, more than anything in the world, and ultimately it is this love that is the best part of him.

Bonus points for a cameo by Jackie Mason who plays Navin’s first boss, the gas station owner. As a kid, I was a fan of all kinds of comedy and wonder if I was the only kid who would repeat Mason’s Yiddishisms. I dare say the man did more to popularize the use of words like oy vey, fakakta, and schmuck than anyone.

Double bonus points for Steve Martin. So many comedians rise up the ladder as anyone does in any profession. They get a small part here or there, many a medium sized role that leads to a big break. Martin had already been a popular SNL host and a comedian who sold out shows in major venues. He also wrote for Smothers Brothers. So by the time this, his first movie, came around, he was a veritable PHD in funny holder. Even though Martin was a Great Bambino level comic by the time this film came along, it is still rare for a comedian to knock their first movie out of the park.

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Friday, October 6, 2017

Classic Movie Review: The Jerk (1979)

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Why bill murray called steve martin's $100 million comedy classic "a dog".

The Jerk is one of Steve Martin's most iconic films, but Bill Murray actually panned the $100 million comedy classic while on Saturday Night Live.

The Jerk is considered a comedic classic and one of Steve Martin's best films, despite Bill Murray calling it "a dog" on SNL.
Bill Murray's negative review was likely a joke, as he had originally filmed scenes for the movie that were cut.
Bill Murray and Steve Martin eventually collaborated in the film Little Shop of Horrors, making up for Murray's absence in The Jerk.

The Jerk is one of Steve Martin's most acclaimed comedy films, which makes it weird that Bill Murray called the $100 million classic " a dog " while on Saturday Night Live. Bill Murray and Steve Martin have seemingly been friendly throughout the years, which is why this moment of rivalry between the fellow comedians has left some heads scratching. However, there is an explanation for Bill Murray's negative review of The Jerk , and here's why it happened.

The Jerk is one of the earliest feature-length comedies to star Saturday Night Live alumni Steve Martin, and it is now considered a comedic classic. The Jerk follows Steve Martin's Navin Johnson, a boneheaded and childlike homeless man from Mississippi who rises and falls alongside his empire of wealth. Despite releasing in 1979, The Jerk is still considered a classic to this day, with it being hailed as one of Steve Martin's best. The Jerk has had a resurgence due to it being available to stream on Netflix, with it continuing to get laughs despite Bill Murray's review.

Related: 10 Iconic Steve Martin Characters, Ranked By Likability

Bill Murray Panned The Jerk For Cutting His Scenes

Bill Murray and Steve Martin are both Saturday Night Live alumni, but that didn't stop Bill Murray from panning The Jerk . During a Weekend Update segment on December 15th, 1979 (shortly after the film was released), Bill Murray commented on the film in a joking fashion. This is because Bill Murray was original set to be in the film, but his scenes ended up getting cut. Here's Murray's full comment on the film:

"I was in the movie but cut out of it. That doesn't influence my opinion. The movie is a dog. There's something missing. I don't know who it is, I can't say."

Related: Why Steve Martin Retired (And The Reason He’s Back)

Bill Murray filmed a cameo for The Jerk , something that was expected due to his friendship with Martin. In the film, Bill Murray was to play a gay interior designer, but the scene didn't make it into the final film. This would have marked the first of several film collaborations between Bill Murray and Steve Martin, although this, unfortunately, didn't happen due to Murray's scenes getting shafted.

Bill Murray & Steve Martin Finally Appeared Together In Little Shop Of Horrors

Bill Murray and Steve Martin's first true film collaboration happened a few years later, in 1986's Little Shop of Horrors . In the film, Martin plays a sadistic dentist, with him having a major role in the film. Murray's role is much smaller, with him only having a cameo role as one of the dentist's patients. However, Murray and Martin do share the screen together, making up for The Jerk 's cut scenes.

Related: Steve Martin’s 10 Best Characters

Interestingly, Murray and Martin's scene in Little Shop of Horrors can be seen as a humorous response to Murray's take on The Jerk during the SNL episode. The scene sees the dentist torture his patient in the dentist chair, with Steve Martin severely hurting Murray's character. However, Bill Murray's Little Shop of Horror character is a masochist, meaning that the dentist's torturous methods don't do much to Murray. While Bill Murray's scenes in The Jerk didn't make it into the final cut, it's nice to see that the comedic duo's relationship continued.

PopEntertainment.com > Reviews > Movie Reviews > The Jerk

Movie reviews.

The Jerk - 26th Anniversary Edition

In 2005, there are two Steve Martins. There is the smart, sophisticated Martin. He is an art collector, a writer of essays, plays, novels and a series of brilliant comic films (including Roxanne, Bowfinger, LA Story and hopefully the upcoming adaptation of his novella Shopgirl. ) He is also a wonderfully smart actor and comic who can work brilliantly in other people's comedies (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Parenthood, Father of the Bride, The Housesitter, Planes Trains & Automobiles) and dramas (The Spanish Prisoner, Grand Canyon and his good work in the okay Leap of Faith).

The second Steve Martin is more problematic � he's still a brilliant comic performer, but he's one who is willing prostitute himself and take any crappy script that comes his way. Cheaper by the Dozen, The Out-Of-Towners, Sgt. Bilko, Mixed Nuts, Novocaine, Father of the Bride 2, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, My Blue Heaven and more .. . the list is too long and too depressing to ponder.

However, there was a third, almost forgotten Steve Martin. Steve Martin the gonzo stand-up comic, a man who revolutionized the form with his slyly surreal, disarmingly stupid and unflinchingly strong comic vision.

The Jerk was Martin's debut film (unless you count a hilariously funny cameo in The Muppet Movie and a lesser spot in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ) and much more than any future performance, it captured the manic energy of Martin's stand-up comic persona. This is because The Jerk was written specifically to play off of Martin's best-selling comedy records. It even visualized some of Martin's off-beat comic riffs (the cat juggling sequence is much funnier than you'd want to believe � and no cats were harmed, honest...)

The Jerk was a trailblazer in the current so-stupid-it's-smart school of comic filmmaking. Without it The Farrelly Brothers, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and Will Ferrell would not have a career. (I'm still debating whether or not that is a good thing.) However, The Jerk is not just going for dumb laughs (which are there, of course, by the bucketload), but it is also a sly and knowing parody of the American dream. The Jerk shows that no one is so down and out and useless that they can't become rich and famous, and then lose it all spectacularly.

Martin plays Navin Johnson, the son of a southern sharecropping family who has never understood why he does not fit in with his funky, spiritual family. He finally finds his calling when he hears Muzak on the radio, so his mother (Mabel King) has to admit that he was adopted. ("You mean I'm going to stay this color?" he moans.)

He goes out on the road to find fame ("The new phone books are out! The new phone books are out! I'm somebody now. My name is in print.") and fortune (his first job nets him $1.10 an hour.) He floats through dead end jobs from gas attendant to carny. He gets involved with a tough motorcycle stuntwoman. He is stalked by a mad sniper (M. Emmitt Walsh). ("He hates these cans!") He makes a gadget to keep a traveling salesman's (Bill Macy � Maude 's husband, not the Mamet regular) glasses from slipping down which becomes a sensation.

Then Navin meets the love of his life � a "kewpie doll" played by Martin's then-girlfriend and current Broadway baby Bernadette Peters. When his gadget becomes a sensation, he finds love and money and a perfect lifestyle, but of course it is all a matter of time before it comes crashing down.

As you can tell, lots of things happen but there isn't much story going on. That's okay, though, this movie was a showcase for the comic stylings of its star, not a drama. It is just a long series of skits stitched together to make a story. Not all of The Jerk has aged all that well and some of the jokes strain to be funny. But the film is still a fascinating look at a nascent movie career. And you'll laugh at it a hell of a lot more than you would if you checked out the debuts of most of the comics who tried to follow in his footsteps. (8/05)

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A simpleminded, sheltered country boy suddenly decides to leave his family home to experience life in the big city, where his naivete is both his best friend and his worst enemy.
Navin is an idiot. He grew up in Mississippi as the adopted son of a black family, but on his 18th birthday he feels he wants to discover the rest of the world and sets out for St. Louis. There everyone exploits his naivete, until a simple invention brings him a fortune. — Tom Zoerner <[email protected]>
Of all days, the guileless Mississippi boy, Navin Johnson, discovers that he's not the natural-born child of an impecunious African-American family, on his birthday. Unable to cope with the shocking revelation, Navin, driven by a melodious tune on the radio, summons up the courage to go beyond the edge of the fence, see the world, and be somebody. As a result, his first stop in St. Louis will pave the way for remarkable achievements, tardy recognition, and of course, love; however, sometimes, the gap between success and failure can be very narrow. Will Navin ever find his place in the world? — Nick Riganas
Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin) is a dim-witted White man who was adopted as an infant by a poor rural southern Black family. Never able to follow the beat of Rhythm and Blues or Gospel, one day as a young man he hears a Lawrence Welk song on the radio and able to follow the beat, he realizes there is more to the world than the 2 room shack they live in, and he decides to go out into the world to seek his fortune. He hitch-hikes to St. Louis where an overtly Jewish gas station owner, Mr. Hartounian (Jackie Mason), gives him a job and a back room to stay in. Navin starts sending a little money home to his adoptive family whenever he can. While pumping gas, Navin comes up with a fix for a fast-talking salesman customer whose eyeglasses keep slipping off his nose. It is a wire loop with a nose brace. The grateful man thinks he can market the invention and promises Navin 50% of any profits. Navin gets into the local phone book, from which a crazed gunowner (M. Emmet Walsh) randomly picks him as a target for assassination. Navin is shot at, but manages to flee, and winds up in a carnival trailer heading out of town. Navin gets a job as a weight-guesser with the carnival, and loses his virginity to a stunt-daredevil woman. He meets and falls in love with a carnival goer, Marie (Bernadette Peters), a cosmetologist. They get married on the spur of the moment by the first legally authorized person they can find to perform the ceremony, who happens to be a Black Witch Doctor. The salesman tracks Navin down with a Private Eye who happens to be the crazed assassin gone straight. Navin's invention has been a huge success and Navin starts getting checks for large sums of money. He hires servants and then purchases an extravagant mansion. Just as it look as if life cannot get any better, he is sued by purchasers of the "Opti-Grab" device. Apparently, it makes wearers cross-eyed. Navin loses all his money, and wanders off to become a homeless bum. Marie dumps him and he is heartbroken. At the film's end, his Black family and Marie find him on skid row. Apparently his foster-father had invested the relatively modest sums of money Navin sent home from his various jobs, and the family is much better off. In the closing scene, we see that they have built a much-larger unpainted shack to replace the old one.

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Parents say (3)
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Based on 19 kid reviews

"Navin, I'd love you if you were the color of a baboon's a**."

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Great movie, this movie is good, great comedy for 12-14, classic steve martin comedy, the jerk is not a bad movie, steve martin's funniest movie by far, hilarious, should be pg.

Hot Bloods Writing Club

Movie review: The Jerk

Continuing with our foray into classic films, this time we’ve opted for something a little lighter, with Steve Martin’s The Jerk (1979), dir. Carl Reiner – a goofball, slapstick comedy, and Martin’s first lead role in a feature film.

Lauren’s verdict:

The movie opens – a man sits dishevelled in an alley, clearly having reached rock bottom, in a drunken drawl he begins to tell us his life story, and about how he ended up in such dire straits. The man introduces himself as Navin ( Steve Martin ), and begins: “ It was never easy for me. I was born a poor, black child ”.

Raised by a loving black family on a farm in Mississippi, Navin’s always felt different. Overwhelmed by this feeling on his birthday, Navin runs into his room crying. When his mother comes in to comfort him, she carefully admits Navin’s not their natural-born son. The movie then sets the comedy tone when a clearly 35-year-old, grey-haired Navin chokes out “You mean I’m going to stay this colour?”

The next day, his world upended, Navin decides to venture out into the real world to make something of himself. His family sees him off with loving hugs and a very valid concern that his well-meaning naivety might not get him very far. What follows is a hilarious story about a world unprepared for a plucky, country boy armed with a thermos and good intentions. We watch as Navin works his way from gas station attendant, to carnie, to multi-millionaire. The film, all the while, compelling us to walk the line between Navin’s glorious optimism and his relentless stupidity.

In The Jerk Steve Martin manages to dominate the comedy spectrum – as a king of one liners, and as a master of complex, dialogue-driven, gags that will leave you cackling. Navin’s love-interest Marie, played by Broadway star Bernadette Peters, is a perfect match. Saccharine sweet and as foolish as Navin, Marie manages to replicate Martin’s comedic timing perfectly, leaving their romance feeling innocent and genuinely touching. Navin’s rags to riches (to rags again) story is goofy and fun, but in the end, honestly shows us the unyielding power of a loving family.

5/5 Pizzas in a Cup™️ 🍕🥤

Jeremy’s verdict:

The Jerk is the silliest, goofiest, and most absurd comedy I have seen in many years. Navin (Steve Martin) leaves his home and family on his birthday one year, when he realises he doesn’t quite fit in (he’s white and the adopted son of a black family – the gag being his mother needs to tell him this). His adventure begins as he hitch-hikes off to St. Louis to make a living and find his way in the world. What follows is a narrative that traces key moments in Navin’s adventure – love, work, riches and fame – and fills the gaps in-between with scenes and situations primed for Martin’s perfect physical, slapstick humour. There were few moments where I wasn’t laughing.

Along the way, Navin’s two companions are Marie (Bernadette Peters), a woman he meets and falls in love with while working at a carnival, and his dog – “Shithead” – who earns his name when Navin mistakenly believes he’s alerting him to an apartment fire (hearing Martin yell “Shithead, c’mon!” with such a straight face is hilarious). We follow Navin on his journey from working at a gas station to fame – and discover that as the titular lead, Navin is less of a jerk, and instead embodies both innocent naivety and idiotic foolishness in spades, which are the perfect foundation for Martin’s silliness and physicality.

The film feels like a precursor to the kind of absurd humour I loved as a child, like Steve Oedekerk’s Kung Pow (2002), which I still defend to this day as a work of comedic genius, and Hot Rod (2007) from Akiva Schaffer and The Lonely Island guys. It seems clear how some of their humour and style is indebted to what Martin and director Carl Reiner did here.

The Jerk ’s only dated downfall is when Navin at one stage yells the n-word – having grown up believing himself to be black, he is outraged at the suggestions of business associates/mobsters who want to keep black people out of a housing development, and beats them up in response. It’s something which obviously would not fly as a joke made today – such that some current edits of the film have cut it out – and despite the heart of the joke, it made me feel reflexively uncomfortable in a way people may not have back when it premiered.

What is worth noting is that the jokes related to Navin’s adopted upbringing are at his expense, and his family are portrayed as some of the most lovingly kind and supportive characters in the film. The jokes don’t punch down on them. At his birthday dinner early on, we see Navin’s mother bring out his favourite meal: “Tuna fish salad on white bread with mayonnaise, a Tab, and a couple of Twinkies”.

When Navin gets upset and leaves for his room, his mum follows him and tells him the truth of his adoption. His response ?

You mean I’m going to stay this colour?

It’s a testament to this film’s sense of humour that my entire list of notes for this review just contained jokes I wanted to remember. Navin and Marie’s kiss on the beach. The Cup of Pizza they eat on their date. Martin’s masterclass delivery about how long they’ve known each other for . He and Peters are adoringly sweet together on screen, and their chemistry adds a beautiful anchor to the film’s story. But the slapstick and physical humour – it’s where this film shines, and it’s on par with the laughs I got when my dad introduced me and my brother to Monty Python when we were kids. Absolutely glorious.

4.5/5 Pizzas in a Cup™️ 🍕🥤

Published by Jeremy

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M. emmet walsh, actor in ‘blood simple’ and ‘blade runner,’ dies at 88.

The Spirit Award winner, adept at comedy as well as drama, also was memorable in 'The Jerk,' 'Slap Shot,' 'Brubaker' and 'Critters.'

By Chris Koseluk

Chris Koseluk

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M. Emmet Walsh, the wily character actor who became an audience favorite for his deliciously despicable performances in such films as Blood Simple , Blade Runner , Brubaker and The Jerk , has died. He was 88.

Walsh died Tuesday in St. Albans, Vermont, his longtime manager, Sandy Joseph, told The Hollywood Reporter. The cause was cardiac arrest.

“A consummate old pro of the second-banana business, Walsh has left his mark on 109 movies and counting, with the grin of that big bastard who stands between you and something else — and knows it,” Nicolas Rapold wrote in a 2011 profile of the actor for L.A. Weekly .

In the same piece, Walsh — who wound up with more than 230 credits listed on IMDb — summed up his philosophy toward acting: “I don’t want you to see an M. Emmet Walsh. I want you to see a garbage collector or a president of Princeton or whatever. … I do everyman. And also I play hard.”

With his imposing stature, Walsh often was cast as someone in authority. He played an army recruitment sergeant in Alice’s Restaurant (1969), a prison guard in Little Big Man (1970), a doctor in Airport ’77 (1977), Dustin Hoffman ‘s belligerent parole office caught with his pants down in Straight Time (1978), a corrupt lumber merchant in Brubaker (1980), the police chief in Critters (1986), a governor in The Milagro Beanfield War (1988) and a sheriff in Bitter Harvest (1993).

Walsh also is fondly remembered for his winning performances as the humble sportswriter Dickie Dunn in Slap Shot (1977), as the relentlessly demented sniper determined to put a bullet in Steve Martin in The Jerk (1979) and as Michael Keaton ‘s sponsor in Clean and Sober (1988).

In a story with no redeeming participants, Visser is by far the most reprehensible, and in a 2000 revival review of the film, Roger Ebert referred to Walsh as “that poet of sleaze.”

“Every time, you [have to] try to figure something individual that works for the character,” Walsh told The Guardian in 2017. “If you’re playing a villain, you don’t play villain. … Visser doesn’t think of himself as particularly bad or evil. He’s on the edge of what’s legal, but he’s having a lot of fun with all that. He’s a simple fella trying to make an extra buck and going a little further than he’d normally go in his business enterprises.”

Walsh was honored with a Spirit Award for best male lead for Blood Simple . The Coens then brought the actor back for another splashy role, as a yakking machine shop worker in Raising Arizona (1987).

If not Visser, then Walsh will best be remembered for his portrayal of Bryant in Ridley Scott ‘s Blade Runner (1982). As was typical of a Walsh character, Bryant is a hard-nosed police captain who forces Rick Deckard ( Harrison Ford ) out of retirement to resume his post as a specialist who hunts down bioengineered replicants that have gotten loose. “I need you Deck. This is a bad one, the worse yet,” he says through clenched teeth. “I need the old blade runner. I need your magic.”

After seeing the finished film for the first time, Walsh realized he wasn’t the only one with that opinion. “We all sat there and it ended. And nothing,” he said, laughing hysterically. “We didn’t know what to say or to think or do! We didn’t know what in the hell we had done! The only one who seemed to get it was Ridley.”

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Spermworld (now streaming on FX and Hulu ) is one of those wild and rare documentaries about a subculture you likely aren’t aware exists, although you probably aren’t surprised that it actually does: a community of sperm donors and recipients who meet in Facebook groups, and essentially engage in DNA exchanges without the oversight of doctors or any other medical system. The film is directed by one of the best young documentary filmmakers to emerge in recent years, Lance Oppenheim, who seems to have embedded himself into the lives of three men as they sell or donate their semen to women who yearn to be mothers. And as Oppenheim made the best documentary of 2020, Some Kind of Heaven , he may have just made the best one of 2024 too.

SPERMWORLD : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open in a Santa Cruz motel room, where one of the most awkward one-night stands in the history of sex is about to happen. The man explains his technique and the physics of the transaction, and the woman agrees to it – and let’s be clear here, this is absolutely transactional. They’ll attempt to conceive in, as they say, the old-fashioned way. Birds and bees. This is how it works sometimes. We’ll move on from this uncomfortable scene and settle into three other narratives in which the preferred method is ever so slightly less weird: A man alone in a room with some pornography and a cup, and when he’s done, he’ll deliver the specimen and a syringe to the woman. Biology!

These people meet in Facebook groups where some of the men are generous types who want to support LGBTQ+ couples or other altruistic ideals. Some are in it for the money, but it’s still significantly cheaper than a sperm bank (and doesn’t involve awful, awful insurance companies), albeit without the oversight and regulation and other things that might alleviate risk. I know – you have questions: Do creeps get into these forums? Of course they do. It seems as if the users are pretty good at policing things, though. And what about potential donors who pretend to be kind and noble, but are just in it for some form of sexual conquest? Well, that’s a gray area. Spermworld only profiles down-to-their-bones good people, possibly because the skeevy ones would never participate.

Let’s meet our first donor, Tyree Kelly. He greets a lesbian couple in a hotel room, and they have a pleasant, if slightly awkward exchange in which he gets to know them a little bit as human beings before he hands over the goods. A funny wrinkle: The couple also meets Tyree’s fiance, Atasha Pena Clay, who shares that she, too, is trying to get pregnant, and she has to fit herself into his busy insemination schedule. It’s funny, maybe. Tyree’s motive is altruistic – he donates blood and plasma regularly, and often doesn’t charge any money for his sperm, all part of his attempt to put some good into the world after he spent some time in prison (for reasons that remain vague). Atasha goes with him on some of his donation runs; they park in the empty lot of an abandoned building and she queues up a stimulating video on her phone while he reclines his car seat all the way back, and thankfully, this is when the camera cuts away. If Tyree and Atasha’s relationship seems like a pretty complicated dynamic, well, it gets even more fraught as the film goes on. They face hardship and endure some large portions of cosmic irony, but there’s so much love between them, we can’t help but believe that they’ll endure.

Next is Steve Walker, a 65-year-old divorcee who’s relatively new to the sperm donation community; he has three successful pregnancies in six months, and remains in contact with the familes. He connects with Rachel Stanley, a single woman who has endured a lung transplant and cystic fibrosis diagnosis, and is now doing an end-around of her doctors, who think a pregnancy is too risky. Steve is incredibly polite and personable, with an endearing salty streak, and he’s nothing but respectful when inviting the softspoken and sensitive Rachel into his home. He makes her dinner, they sit by his pool, he hosts a movie night (of all things, they watch Mulholland Dr. !). They’re not successful in getting Rachel pregnant after several attempts, but they might have an odd sort of friendship developing here; from the look of things, both seem to suffer from acute loneliness. Rachel rightly senses that Steve is developing romantic feelings for her, and the camera keeps rolling as they sit down for what might be a terribly awkward conversation.

Finally, we have Ari Nagel, who’s in his 40s and introduces himself as the father of 123 children. But he says he really needs to quit being a donor: “I’m already too old to be jerking off in public restrooms,” he says. His friends and family wonder if this is some type of unusual addiction, but that might be the least unusual thing about this guy. He’s so open about his – what is it, work? Hobby? Calling? – that we see him teaching a college statistics class a lesson in probability, using himself and his paternity as an example. He has no permanent home, because he spends all his time traveling, visiting his children, the families happily letting him crash on their couches. Ari visits his parents, and his aging, ailing mother just. Doesn’t. Get it. Their relationship is loving, but complicated. He throws a party for some of his kids, with bouncy houses and all the fun stuff, but he has to duck out to, well, jerk off in a public restroom. Twice. He double-booked himself. Miscommunication. Too bad for donor no. 2’s yield, but it’s better than nothing, I guess.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Spermworld might be further beyond the pale than anything Errol Morris or Werner Herzog ever directed. (It also might be more painfully humane.) Think Fast, Cheap and Out of Control or Vernon, Florida from the former, and short films such as How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck or The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner from the latter.

Performance Worth Watching: You’ll walk away from the film a huge fan of Atasha, who comes off as an astoundingly supportive, patient and loving partner for Tyree (who’s also a sweetheart of a man). I hope she gets everything she wants, needs and deserves.

Memorable Dialogue: Sometimes, Oppenheim gives us the lay of the land of these Facebook groups by sharing posts and conversations from them: “Just finished insemination no. 1. Best donor ever!” reads one post that seems pretty insane in any context but this one. Another commenter sums up the entire endeavor succinctly: “I don’t know about normal. This whole business is a bit abnormal.”

Sex and Skin: None, although there are a few moments where Oppenheim comes right up to the brink of something before cutting away.

Our Take: The word of the day is awkward – and once you get past that, it’ll sink in how odd and moving Spermworld can be, and you’ll reflect on Oppenheim’s ability to capture moments of startling intimacy. So startling and intimate, you’re kind of surprised his subjects agreed to be filmed. Perhaps they realize that their vulnerability is a boon for this fascinating exploration of Very Big Ideas: Biology, psychology, the perpetuation of life, selflessness and selfishness, the need for human beings to connect on a profound level. It also serves as a reminder that no emotion is simple, no matter how much we insist they are, or want them to be – and few are more complex than those derived from the interactions of gray-market sperm donors and recipients, especially those profiled in this film.

Oppenheim employs a visual sense you don’t see in documentaries stocked with talking heads and archival footage (which is nearly all of them, it seems). He and cinematographer David Bolin stray from strict observation in an attempt to capture or create contemplative moods; their aesthetic frequently employs natural lighting and artfully staged shots, and even when they stray from the pointlessly strict conventions of cinema verite – which is quite often – they remain strict proponents of truth. You might even say that truth is ecstatic .

The director essentially embeds himself in his subjects’ lives, and the footage he gets illustrates the trust he earned. In Steve, we see a man who may need a relationship that transcends simple friendship, stops short of marriage and is more meaningful than casual sex. In Rachel, we see a crushing inner conflict between her needs and desires, and harsh reality; she and Steve share a surprisingly matter-of-fact conversation about mortality that’s quietly heartbreaking. In Ari, we see a wildly complex man who’ll inspire divisive reactions, because his definition of “fatherhood” is so far outside the norm. In Tyree and Atasha, we see people with great big hearts full of love for themselves and others, and they’re just trying to get by, and build a family, and achieve dreams that may never come to fruition. It’s funny how deeply Spermworld sinks in, several hours after the credits roll, and weird how the deep strangeness of the borderline surreal interactions in this community drop away so quickly as Oppenheim pushes past all apprehensions and judgements to find such potently human stories.

Our Call: Must see. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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It’s recess at a small school in Nigeria and the boys are kicking around an empty water bottle in an improvised game of soccer. Except for one. Anthony Madu on the far side of the playground, is performing a private ballet. One of his classmates asks, “Why is he dancing like a girl?”

Anthony is dancing because that is who he is. When he is not dancing, his body is shy, uncertain. When he dances, he is sure, elegant, graceful. “Madu” is a documentary about what happened when a brief 2020 video of Anthony dancing barefoot in the rain went viral, leading to an invitation to study in a seven-year program at an elite British ballet academy. As the film begins, he is packing and saying his farewells. He receives his passport, where he is described as a “child student.” His mother is proud, happy for him, but painfully aware of how much she will miss him. We see him silhouetted against the train window, an unfamiliar landscape outside. When he arrives, he calls home and like all mothers, her first question is “Have you eaten?”

In their call a few weeks later, she says Anthony is adopting a British accent and his brother says, “You’re speaking like a white person.” We see the poignance of Anthony’s missing his family but feeling that the shared dedication to dance is a different kind of home, equally precious. “Home is a place where you feel like you belong,” he says, meaning the world of dance, but then he says home is also where your family is.

We might have expected that Anthony might feel isolated or even bullied for being from another country and culture, but his classmates are all friendly and inclusive. Some of the film’s sweetest moments are watching Anthony completely comfortable as he is laughing with his friends or hugging them goodbye as they leave for summer break. Some of the most touching are when we see his parents watching his performance as one of the stars of the end of school year production, via FaceTime, in Nigeria.

The entering class is told they are the select few of over 500 who applied. But this is not like the many other dance films about demanding teachers. The presence of the documentary cameras may be a factor, but the kindness, sensitivity, and compassion of everyone Anthony meets is so pervasive that it is clearly the culture of the community around him. A teacher tells the students that a warmth in the muscles during practice is good, but if it ever burns, they should stop. And when a serious health issue arises, the school and the doctors are sympathetic and supportive.

The style of the documentary is “fly on the wall.” Filmmakers Matthew Ogens and Joel Kachi Benson include occasional interviews with Anthony and his parents but no talking head experts. Cinematography by Charlie Goodger and Motheo Moeng is intimate and lyrical, with contemplative music that contrasts with the classical pieces accompanying the dance lessons and performance. An opening scene shows us Anthony dancing near a fire, his movements in the flickering light showing the fiery spirit that impels him. Near the end, he is on the beach, wading into endless water stretching all the way to the horizon, indicating the larger, more centered sense of himself and his passion for ballet made possible by access to teachers and other dancers, and a sense of possibility. But, as with the boys at the center of documentaries like “ Hoop Dreams ” and “ The Wolfpack ,” the focus on those who are too young to have a nuanced understanding of what is happening to and around them can make us feel both unsatisfyingly removed and uncomfortably intrusive. Maybe the only solution is to require any documentary about those who are underage to be locked away and then brought out again when the children are old enough to watch it and make up their minds about whether they are willing to have it seen.

Anthony’s eloquence is in his movement. A telling moment is his assignment to create a dance performance. Even to an untrained eye, his extraordinary gifts are unmistakable. His grace, balance, and control are exceptional, and his leaps are breathtaking. The teachers who are evaluating him are warmly encouraging, complimenting his love of movement. They gently ask whether he had a story in mind. When he says no, they suggest he try to imagine a narrative. Given the complexity and near-fairy tale improbability of his real-life story, it is not surprising that Anthony is comfortable taking a break from plot to revel in the pure abstraction of movement. With this documentary, we can appreciate his story, and his relevé and pirouette.

On Disney+ now.

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

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The most revelatory aspect of the art of drag is how it lays bare the centrality of performance in our everyday lives. That’s most obvious when it comes to thinking about gender. Wigs, heels and makeup go a long way toward revealing femininity to be a kind of armature deployed as intentionally on the streets as it is on a stage. In “Femme,” Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s debut feature, that kernel of truth becomes the anchor for a deliciously vicious London-set revenge thriller.

When Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) steps into the spotlight at a bar as his alter ego, Aphrodite, you can see he’s in his element. With voguing dancers flanking her, Aphrodite is aptly named. She is a goddess of the night. If you saw her lit only by moonlight, you’d be forgiven for being so taken with her grace. But such magic tends to disappear under the humbling fluorescents of a corner store, particularly unkind to drag makeup.

“Is that a bloke?” Jules overhears a friend ask Preston ( George MacKay of “1917”), as Aphrodite stands in line waiting to get a pack of cigarettes. Quietly, in a tight close-up, you see the queen trying to figure out how best to react to Preston’s posturing homophobia. Should she shrink herself into nothing or try to shine as brightly as she’d done on stage?

She opts for the latter. “How can you call me a fag in front of all your friends when I caught you checking me out earlier?” she says. All too quickly the scene devolves into a violent blur. Stripped, kicked and recorded on Preston’s phone throughout the ordeal, Jules is left with nothing. No wig. No dress. No comebacks. No dignity.

Imagine his luck, then, when one day at a bathhouse, Jules spots his assailant (all abs, tats and attitude). In a split second, whatever self-pity had taken a hold of him following the attack is gone. He pursues Preston (who, it seems, doesn’t recognize his victim), hops in his car and kicks off the erotic, tense tête à tête that structures this slick, stylish queer neo-noir.

Two men have a confrontation against a wall.

Scouring the web for sex videos of outed masc “straight” boys, Jules begins concocting a plan. If he can get Preston on camera, maybe he can finally find closure, find a way to make good on the taunting line that first egged this loutish guy into senseless violence. Pulsing with Adam Janota Bzowski’s drone-like synth score, lit by James Rhodes’ neon-tinged cinematography and cut with flair by Selina Macarthur, that scene is but one moment when “Femme” firmly establishes itself as a bold self-assured debut.

Already a keen performer, Jules quickly becomes everything a closeted guy would want. Using his coyness as his most versatile seductive power, Jules (and, in turn, Stewart-Jarrett) nails the role of homme fatale the film requires. That includes dressing “normal” for his dinner “dates” with Preston and playing into the fantasies he knows excite him.

These late night encounters begin with a wild kind of violent, volatile chemistry. But they soon become more tender. Away from his mates, Preston is much softer than he purports to be when drowning in oversized sweatshirts and hardened grins. And armed with such a protective partner (or maybe so close to recording his revenge sex tape), Jules is finally able to climb out of the depression that had derailed him.

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The question throughout the film, of course, is whether this budding relationship is or could be real. These are two young men who move in worlds that constantly demand that they perform. Both are experts at code-switching and calibrating their moves, their words and even their bodies in any given context. The two begin by offering one another versions of themselves they can’t show others. And as they each wonder whether such vulnerability will be anything but a liability, we’re left to wonder instead whether film and romance alike can end in anything but violence.

To watch Stewart-Jarrett (a glittering steel blade) and MacKay (a hardened fist blooming) play this pair of wounded would-be lovers is to witness two actors walking on a razor’s edge. Their characters’ mercurial motivations are often violently splintering, to the point where you’re never sure what, if anything, is authentic after all.

Within that funhouse mirror of an erotic-thriller premise, “Femme” proves to be a gorgeously mounted meditation on queer and queered performance. As Freeman and Ng’s film arrives at its necessarily cruel, bloody ending — as surprising as it is inevitable — you’re left as torn as its central pair. Bruised, yes. But perhaps all the stronger for it.

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Louis Gossett Jr., commanding actor of TV and film, dies at 87

He won an oscar playing a marine drill instructor in ‘an officer and a gentleman’ and an emmy as a wise old enslaved person in the groundbreaking miniseries ‘roots’.

Louis Gossett Jr., an actor who brought authority to hundreds of screen roles, winning an Oscar as a Marine drill instructor in “An Officer and a Gentleman” and an Emmy Award as a wise, older guide to the enslaved Kunta Kinte in the groundbreaking miniseries “Roots,” died March 29 at a rehabilitation center in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87.

His first cousin Neal L. Gossett confirmed the death but said he did not know the immediate cause. In recent years, Louis Gossett Jr. battled prostate cancer and respiratory illness caused by toxic mold in his former home in Malibu, Calif.

In a career spanning nearly seven decades, Mr. Gossett became one of the most recognizable actors of his generation. With his gleaming shaved skull and the sinewy 6-foot-3 physique of a former college basketball player, he brimmed with magnetism.

In his drive to shatter boundaries as an African American performer, he worked on Broadway and other stages starting in the 1950s and appeared in dramas such as Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark “A Raisin in the Sun,” Jean Genet’s anti-colonialism play “The Blacks” and Conor Cruise O’Brien’s “Murderous Angels,” in the last as the ill-fated Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba.

He seemed poised for greater success after winning an Emmy for “Roots” in 1977 and the supporting actor Oscar for “An Officer and a Gentleman” in 1983. He was the first Black actor to receive an Academy Award since Sidney Poitier’s win in 1964 for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.” But despite Mr. Gossett’s widely acknowledged range, he found himself largely excluded from prestigious and lucrative film roles.

“I thought I’d get a lot of offers — and they didn’t come,” he told the New York Times in 1989. Several factors were at work, he later said. One was age: He was in his mid-40s, putting him at a disadvantage when competing for leading parts, especially when people of color had fewer opportunities in general. Another, he said, was the difficulty of pursuing a career while raising a young son as a divorced single father.

The pressures and disappointments became so great, he said, that he sank into depression and became addicted to cocaine and alcohol. Mr. Gossett’s reputation plummeted after a former wife alleged during a custody battle in 1982 that their son was spoon-fed “white powder” by one of Mr. Gossett’s girlfriends. Criminal charges were dropped for lack of evidence, and Mr. Gossett retained custody, but the damage seemed insurmountable.

In a memoir, “An Actor and a Gentleman,” Mr. Gossett wrote that White actors “were able to overcome worse predicaments with drugs and alcohol and self-destructive acts.” He added: “For them, there was a hope of redemption and an even more successful career at the end of treatment, the drug problem only adding to the allure. But for a black man who was supposed to ‘mind his manners,’ the drugs were a permanent blemish. For me, the road was too narrow to have room to fool around.”

To pay the bills, he was reduced to supporting roles in low-rent action fare starring Chuck Norris and Dolph Lundgren, as well as many direct-to-video movies. And his fallen stature felt like a constant reminder of the indignities he had endured as a Black man in Hollywood, including when he traveled to Los Angeles in 1967 to make a TV movie. He said police handcuffed him to a tree for three hours because he looked suspicious driving a luxury sports car and blasting Sam Cooke on the radio.

Even as an established name, he said he was told by White directors that he wasn’t acting “Black enough” or that he needed to “use those Black phrases.”

“There were times I wanted to quit altogether,” he told the Times in 1989. “Our employment was basically fulfilling Hollywood’s stereotypes about blacks, and the whole mocking mentality of the crews — well, I wanted to leave the business.” Instead, he added, he kept “trying to find some dignity in those parts. But I carried a hot ball in my stomach for a lot of years.”

‘Roots’ and ‘Officer’

Mr. Gossett had a promising start. At 17, in 1953, he secured the lead in “Take a Giant Step,” an acclaimed Broadway drama about a troubled youth. After a torrent of strong reviews in stage parts, he moved into television, slowly transitioning from playing juvenile delinquents to less-stereotyped roles as law enforcement officials and (eventually) white-collar professionals.

His professional breakthrough was “Roots,” the ABC miniseries based on Alex Haley’s best-selling book that traced the impact of slavery on a Black family across generations. The production ran eight nights and was seen by an estimated 130 million people, placing it among the highest-rated programs in television history.

“Roots” provided a rare high-profile dramatic outlet for Black actors such as LeVar Burton, John Amos, Cicely Tyson and Ben Vereen. It swept the Emmy Awards.

Mr. Gossett did not initially embrace the role of Fiddler. At first, he said, he regarded the older character as an “Uncle Tom.” But he came to see a poignant humanity in Fiddler, who lives by his own complicated code to survive in a dehumanizing system.

In perhaps his most revealing moment, Fiddler is traumatized when his young friend Kunta Kinte (played by Burton) is whipped into answering to his slave name, Toby.

“There’s gonna be another day,” he says as he cradles his friend. “You hear me? There’s gonna be another day.”

Mr. Gossett said he improvised those lines of rage and sorrow in the emotion of the moment.

Several years later, Mr. Gossett gave another evocative performance, as Sgt. Emil Foley, the D.I., or drill instructor, in “An Officer and a Gentleman” (1982). To prepare, he spent 10 days undergoing gut-busting Marine Corps drills at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The film’s star was Richard Gere, playing a selfish loner trying to pass Navy aviation officer candidate school while enjoying a fling with a local factory worker (Debra Winger). While the movie focuses principally on Gere and Winger’s growing romantic attachment — to the ballad “Up Where We Belong” — another form of love story emerges between the D.I. and the men and women he trains over 13 grueling weeks to his uncompromising standards.

In a karate showdown and other clashes, Mr. Gossett’s Foley beats moral fiber into Gere’s callow, angry young man. (For years afterward, Mr. Gossett wrote in his memoir, he kept away from bars because his presence sometimes invited fights with drunk Whites seeking to prove that they could best him in martial arts.)

Times film critic Janet Maslin praised Mr. Gossett’s “subtlety and spark” as he navigates the layers of a man who is not entirely the abusive taskmaster he appears.

Mr. Gossett hoped that “An Officer and a Gentleman,” which grossed more than $100 million, would vault him to a higher level of stardom and pay that eluded most Black actors. Instead, he told the Television Academy Foundation, he received no film offers for a year. “People weren’t ready for me to win,” he said. “I was at the racial edge.”

He was eventually carried off in a current of derivative action films, playing a Sea World manager in “Jaws 3-D” (1983), a reptilian extraterrestrial in the science fiction fantasy “Enemy Mine” (1985) and an ex-Vietnam War fighter pilot named Chappy Sinclair in “Iron Eagle” (1986) and sequels.

His drug habit worsened, and he started freebasing cocaine. “All my life I’d been healthy, straight, responsible,” he told the Times in 1989, noting that many members of his immediate family were alcoholics and that his father died of alcoholism-related causes. “And I’d never got high when I was working. … I had an Oscar, an Emmy, and yet I had this big hole in my soul. I was in a pit of self-pity and resentment.”

Fifteen years would pass, he said, before he overcame his addiction through rehab and newfound spiritual fulfillment. He began taking roles in many religious films, including the apocalyptic Christian thriller “Left Behind III: World at War” (2005), playing the American president.

Actor and athlete

Louis Cameron Gossett Jr., the only child of a porter and a maid who later received a nursing degree, was born in Brooklyn on May 27, 1936. He described growing up in the ethnically diverse neighborhood of Coney Island with supportive White friends who gave him the self-confidence to run for senior class president at Abraham Lincoln High School (he won) and become a standout athlete in baseball and basketball.

He nurtured an interest in the performing arts from a young age, taking the subway to Harlem’s Apollo Theater to catch acts and then re-creating them for family members. With the encouragement of a teacher, he tried out for the lead in the Broadway show “Take a Giant Step,” a coming-of-age-drama by Louis Peterson about segregation in a New England town. Mr. Gossett won the part over 400 other contenders.

The show ran for only 76 performances in 1953 but drew plaudits for the unknown performer then still in high school. Theater critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in the Times that Mr. Gossett “conveys the whole range of [his character’s] turbulence — manly and boyish at the same time, wild and disciplined, cruel and pitying. It is a composite of opposite impulses.”

After graduating from high school in 1954, Mr. Gossett took classes at the Actors Studio workshop in Manhattan. One day, the visiting movie star Marilyn Monroe placed her hand on his knee and breathily asked Mr. Gossett if he’d like to play a love scene together.

As he recalled to the Television Academy Foundation, he sensed immediately that this was a put-on — likely orchestrated by classmate Martin Landau , who briefly dated Monroe. “As I go out the door,” Mr. Gossett said, “Marty Landau is in stitches. He never confessed, but he set me up.”

Meanwhile, on an athletic-drama scholarship, he studied at New York University and was a standout on the university basketball team. Invited to the New York Knicks’ rookie-camp tryout after his graduation in 1959, Mr. Gossett gave up his pro-sports ambitions when he was offered a role that year in the forthcoming Broadway play “A Raisin in the Sun.”

The drama, acclaimed for its sensitive portrayal of Black life, starred Poitier as an ambitious Chicago chauffeur who hopes to move his family to the White suburbs. Much of the cast, including Mr. Gossett as the wealthy college student who romances Poitier’s sister, reprised their roles in the well-received 1961 film version.

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On Broadway, Mr. Gossett had a supporting part in “Golden Boy” (1964), a musical starring Sammy Davis Jr., followed by leading roles in plays such as “The Zulu and the Zayda” (1965), set in South Africa, and the Poitier-directed comedy “Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights” (1968).

Mr. Gossett also demonstrated facility as a musician. He sang and played guitar at Manhattan nightclubs and wrote with Richie Havens the antiwar anthem “Handsome Johnny,” which Havens performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. (“That song kept me from being homeless,” Mr. Gossett told HuffPost. “A landlord was putting me out when I got a residual check.”)

Because of an injured Achilles’ tendon, he lost the role of football star Gale Sayers to Billy Dee Williams for the phenomenally successful 1971 ABC movie “Brian’s Song.” But Mr. Gossett won arresting parts in other movies, among them Diana Sands’s ax-wielding jealous husband in “The Landlord” (1970); James Garner’s con-man partner, posing as an enslaved man in the antebellum South, in “Skin Game” (1971); and a Haitian drug dealer in the sunken-treasure hit “The Deep” (1977).

He also headed the cast on the ABC medical drama “The Lazarus Syndrome” (1979), playing an idealistic chief of staff at a private hospital. Although the series got poor reviews and was quickly canceled, Mr. Gossett said he saw it as an opportunity to present a Black role model in medicine.

His marriages to Hattie Glascoe, actress Christina Mangosing and actress-singer Cyndi James-Reese ended in divorce. Survivors include a son from his second marriage, Satie; a son from his third marriage, Sharron, whom he adopted from a St. Louis homeless shelter; and several grandchildren.

In later years, Mr. Gossett led an anti-racism foundation called Eracism. He also appeared in scores of TV shows, including the HBO miniseries “Watchmen” and CBS’s sci-fi series “Extant.” In 2018, after his longtime home in Malibu was destroyed in a wildfire, he moved to Georgia.

Of all his roles, he said his favorite was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in the 1983 TV miniseries “Sadat,” because he felt at the top of his craft, even as he was overlooked by most Hollywood producers.

“Each day of this filming, I felt as if I was not acting,” he noted in his memoir, written with Phyllis Karas. “Instead, I was simply in the midst of a magic that consumed me, allowing me to glide effortlessly into my role and leave everything else behind. I returned to my own reality only after the cameras were turned off. Sometimes I believe that the reason I have been able to do such exemplary work on the screen is because this is the only place I can be free, neither censured nor judged.”

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Movie Review: "The Jerk" (1979)
The Jerk movie review & film summary (1979)
The Jerk wiki, synopsis, reviews, watch and download
Movie Review: "The Jerk" (1979)
The Jerk Movie Review
‎The Jerk (1979) directed by Carl Reiner • Reviews, film + cast

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Jerk jerk jerk jerk ||Olivia Loren the makeup princess

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The Jerk movie review & film summary (1979)
Advertisement. "The Jerk" is all gags and very little comedy. After Martin hits the road, he has a series of adventures as a gas pump jockey, a weight-guesser in a sideshow, a hapless lover of Bernadette Peters, an inventor of a gadget to keep your eyeglasses from falling down.
The Jerk
Navin (Steve Martin) believes he was born a poor black child in Mississippi. He is, however, actually white. Upon figuring this out, he heads north to St. Louis to find himself. After landing a ...
The Jerk
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 22, 2022. Brian Costello Common Sense Media. With comedy legend Carl Reiner directing and unforgettable supporting roles from Jackie Mason and Bernadette ...
The Jerk Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 3 ): Kids say ( 19 ): THE JERK is a classic Steve Martin vehicle -- and certainly the part he was born to play, especially in his late-'70s "wild and crazy guy" heyday. His one-of-a-kind quips and herky-jerky physical comedy are as much a joy to witness now as it was when this movie first came out.
The Jerk: No 24 best comedy film of all time
The Jerk is a classic comedy film directed by Carl Reiner and starring Steve Martin as a naive and clueless man who goes on a hilarious journey of self-discovery. The Guardian ranks it as the 24th ...
The Jerk (1979)
The Jerk - 4.5/5 Country: US Language: English Year: 1979 Rating: R Director: Carl Reiner Starring: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Mable King, M. Emmet Walsh REVIEW BY JOHN ULMER Steve Martin had basically gained a burst of fame before starring in Carl Reiner's wacky comedy "The Jerk." Martin was fresh off hosting "Saturday Night Live" a few times, and had made a few albums and stand-up gigs.
The Jerk
The Jerk is a 1979 American comedy film directed by Carl Reiner and written by Steve Martin, Carl Gottlieb, and Michael Elias (from a story by Steve Martin and Carl Gottlieb). This was Martin's first starring role in a feature film. The film also features Bernadette Peters, M. Emmet Walsh, and Jackie Mason.Critical reviews were mostly positive, and The Jerk was a major financial success.
The Jerk (1979)
The Jerk: Directed by Carl Reiner. With Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Catlin Adams, Mabel King. A simpleminded, sheltered country boy suddenly decides to leave his family home to experience life in the big city, where his naivete is both his best friend and his worst enemy.
BBC
The Jerk (1979) Steve Martin's debut movie "The Jerk" as the lead went on to become the third biggest hit of 1979 in the US. This box office approval was not reflected in the largely venomous ...
The Jerk Review
94 minutes. Certificate: 15. Original Title: Jerk, The. Born the son of poor black sharecroppers, Navin Johnson sets off to seek his fortune in the big wide world. Initially he doesn't get further ...
The Jerk (1979)
The Jerk (1979) I'd love you if you were the color of a baboon's ass. THE SUMMARY: A simple-minded, racially confused farm boy heads to St. Louis to find his special purpose, stumbling into a fortune only to lose it all and return to where he started. This one is exactly my type of humor - groan-worthy puns and double entendres that are so ...
The Jerk (1979) Starring: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, M. Emmet
The Jerk was the first of four movies Steve Martin would star in for director Carl Reiner. It was followed by Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains ... (see photo on Scott's review). I kept thinking of rappers from the 1980s when Marie gives Navin another gold chain. Like poor ghetto musicians making lots of money, he wore ...
The Jerk (1979)
95 min. Release Date. 12/14/1979. The Jerk yearns for great stupidity. Its rags to riches (then to rags and riches again) story is merely a framework on which to hang jokes. If pressed, one could draw some lesson about the dangers of hubris from the journey of Steve Martin's idiotic Navin Johnson, an inexperienced man-child whose desire to ...
Classic Movie Review
Classic Movie Review - The Jerk (1979) Always remember these three important rules of life, 3.5 readers: #1 - Don't trust Whitey. #2 - The Lord loves a working man. #3 - See a doctor and get rid of it. BQB here with a review of this classic comedy of Steve Martin's most hilarious film.
Dave's Movie Site: Classic Movie Review: The Jerk (1979)
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.
The Jerk (1979) movie review
This is the original review of The Jerk by Siskel & Ebert on "Sneak Previews" in 1979. All of the segments pertaining to the movie have been included.
Why Bill Murray Called Steve Martin's $100 Million Comedy Classic "A Dog"
Summary. The Jerk is considered a comedic classic and one of Steve Martin's best films, despite Bill Murray calling it "a dog" on SNL. Bill Murray's negative review was likely a joke, as he had originally filmed scenes for the movie that were cut. Bill Murray and Steve Martin eventually collaborated in the film Little Shop of Horrors, making up ...
PopEntertainment.com: The Jerk (1979) Movie Review
The Jerk - 26th Anniversary Edition. In 2005, there are two Steve Martins. There is the smart, sophisticated Martin. He is an art collector, a writer of essays, plays, novels and a series of brilliant comic films (including Roxanne, Bowfinger, LA Story and hopefully the upcoming adaptation of his novella Shopgirl.) He is also a wonderfully smart actor and comic who can work brilliantly in ...
Movie Review: "The Jerk" (1979)
"The Jerk" is directed by Carl Reiner and stars Steve Martin. It was the kickoff of not only Steve Martin's film career, but the start of a series of pictures Reiner and Martin would work on together, which includes "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid," "The Man With Two Brains," and "All of Me." The film is written by Martin himself along with Carl Gottlieb and Michael Elias.
The Jerk (1979)
Navin is shot at, but manages to flee, and winds up in a carnival trailer heading out of town. Navin gets a job as a weight-guesser with the carnival, and loses his virginity to a stunt-daredevil woman. He meets and falls in love with a carnival goer, Marie (Bernadette Peters), a cosmetologist. They get married on the spur of the moment by the ...
The Jerk Official Trailer #1
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Kid reviews for The Jerk
The Jerk, being one of Steve Martin's earlier films, still holds up as the funniest even now. Definitely worth the watch. So far as content, pretty mild swearing for an R-rated movie, with s--t, and about 3 uses of the "N" word used in a racist way by some rich jerks who say they want to keep the "jungle bunnies" out with Navin finding this very offensive and karate chopping them all.
Movie review: The Jerk
Continuing with our foray into classic films, this time we've opted for something a little lighter, with Steve Martin's The Jerk (1979), dir. Carl Reiner - a goofball, slapstick comedy, and Martin's first lead role in a feature film. Lauren's verdict: The movie opens - a man sits dishevelled in an alley, clearly having reached…
M. Emmet Walsh Dead: 'Blood Simple,' 'Blade Runner' Actor Was 88
M. Emmet Walsh, the wily character actor who became an audience favorite for his deliciously despicable performances in such films as Blood Simple, Blade Runner, Brubaker and The Jerk, has died.He ...
'Spermworld' FX Hulu Review: Stream It Or Skip It?
He throws a party for some of his kids, with bouncy houses and all the fun stuff, but he has to duck out to, well, jerk off in a public restroom. Twice. He double-booked himself.
Madu movie review & film summary (2024)
Movie Reviews TV/Streaming Interviews Collections Great Movies Chaz's Journal Contributors Reviews Madu Nell Minow March 29, 2024. Tweet. Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch. It's recess at a small school in Nigeria and the boys are kicking around an empty water bottle in an improvised game of soccer. Except for one.
'The Shadowless Tower' review: Connection stymied by regrets
Review: In the cryptic 'The Shadowless Tower,' connection is stymied by a murky past Xin Baiqing, left, Huang Yao and Gaowa Siqin in the movie "The Shadowless Tower." (Strand Releasing)
'Femme' review: Vengeance in the guise of erotic flirtation
Review: In 'Femme,' a secret act of vengeance comes disguised as erotic flirtation George MacKay, left, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett in "Femme," a deliciously vicious London-set revenge ...
'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire' review: It's a Titan-ic ...
Looking for a bright side, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" might be the most geeked-out entry in this modern Monsterverse, and there's plenty of gigantic mayhem. Unfortunately, the human ...
Louis Gossett Jr., commanding actor of TV and film, dies at 87
Louis Gossett Jr., an actor who brought authority to hundreds of screen roles, winning an Oscar as a Marine drill instructor in "An Officer and a Gentleman" and an Emmy Award as a wise, older ...