Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy

Steve Martin's funniest three films, The Jerk, The Lonely Guy, and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, are collected in the Wild and Crazy Comedy Collection with some corny bonus material that pales in comparison to Martin's stunning comedic performances. In The Lonely Guy, Martin's dejected character wanders New York streets with his fern plant searching for a lady to love. Scenes in which Martin calls his lady from his rooftop amidst scores of other lonely guys, or jogs into a diner wearing fake, spray-on sweat, seem more slapstick with each viewing. Martin's masterpiece is The Jerk, about Navin Johnson, a white guy born a "poor black child," who sets out for the city to become somebody. Navin, with hobo rucksack in tow, takes his dad's three rules--Don't trust whitey, Lord loves a workin' man, and See a doctor and get rid of it--to an extreme, after becoming a millionaire from inventing a reading glasses apparatus. Co-starring Bernadette Peters, The Jerk's bizarre humor still feels fresh in its satirical examination of race and class. Watching Navin change from a poor black child, to a gas station attendant, to a millionaire, to a drunken egomaniac, to a homeless bum, illustrates Martin's sheer talent for character sketching. If this Wild and Crazy Comedy Collection is a cake, The Jerk is definitely the icing. --Trinie Dalton