Jerk

Year: 1979

Grade: A

Country: USA

Director: Reiner

Review

2002 was the first year since 1979 that steve martin had not been in a film. with what did he follow up his hiatus?…”bringing down the house,” which by all accounts, was a piece of crap. i hope he’s able to crank out a couple more decent pictures before his fades away. novocaine was a good little picture. maybe the pink panther film will be good. regarding the jerk – in my book it’s an unquestioned masterstroke. steve martin shares the writing credits with two virtual nobodys so i’m guessing it was mostly martin, either on the page, or through improvisation, who came up with the bulk of the comedic material. for example, i know that he adlibbed the part where he and bernadette peters are in bed and he’s talking about how they’ve only been together four weeks, but it feels like nine weeks and three days….script aside, martin’s acting is brilliant – he’s such a good physical comedian and he pulls off the role so well that i could scarcely imagine the film without his involvement. don’t get me wrong…carl reiner is a fine director and i like the four other pictures of his that i’ve seen, but this is clearly his best of the those that i’ve seen and i have to attribute the majority of its genius to martin. i can’t really imagine people not liking this film, but apparently some don’t since it has a 6.8 rating on imdb.com. it’s the kind of film that i can watch any time and i’ll always laugh. sadly the dvd is a 1.33:1 presentation, but the film is was originally filmed at 1.85:1.