The Jerk

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

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. Read full review

Sweet, lighthearted, occasionally hilarious. Read full review

By turns funny, vulgar and backhandedly clever, never more so than when it aspires to absolute stupidity. And Mr. Martin, who began his career with an arrow stuck through his head, has since developed a real genius for playing dumb. Read full review

The Jerk is a kind of post-psychedelic Jerry Lewis movie -- Broad, dirty and juvenile, but definitely hip to its own dumbness. Half the jokes fall flat on their face, but when they score they're laugh-out-loud funny. Almost invariably, the best routines are non sequiturs -- off-the-wall riffs where Martin fixates with dopey brilliance on a subject that has nothing to do with the plot. [17 Dec 1979]

The Jerk‘s threadbare plot follows the brilliantly convoluted story. Read full review

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

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. Read full review

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

The title truly lives up to the character. Read full review

The Jerk will not drive away any Steve Martin fans, but neither is it likely to convert many unbelievers. 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. Read full review

Director Carl Reiner has put it together so that the character (hardly) ever becomes boring, and the Martin-Carl Gottlieb-Michael Elias screenplay has just enough genuinely witty moments to keep the story rolling past its flat parts. What more can anyone say? If you like Steve Martin, you'll love this movie. If you don't, you'll laugh sometimes but wish you'd gone elsewhere. [17 Dec 1979]

I didn't find “The Jerk” very funny...There's a smarmy undercurrent in this movie that seems to imply that Steve Martin may be playing a jerk, but that we all know what a cool guy he is. Well, if you're going to play a jerk, play one as if you think you are one, or you might wind up looking like a jerk. Read full review

For my taste a little bit of Steve Martin goes a long way. Moreover, a rickety vehicle like The Jerk is apt to wear out as aspiring comic star's welcome in one swift stroke. Read full review