The Jerk, Too

Okay The Jerk is one of my all time favorite movies. I will even go as far to say that it is a standard for comedies. When I was watching cable a couple months ago I saw this pile of crud and I disturbed by every single second of it. First I laughed at how bad it was, then I was compelled by the fact that it could not get worse, but it did.

I Should have known though look at the cast. First you have Stacy Nelkin who stared in the most insulting chapter of the Halloween series (part 3), and you have Mark Blankfield in the title role. Now he was okay in Robin Hood men in tights, but come on the guy was in Angel 3.

Do yourself a favor and never put yourself through the pain of seeing this... well I was almost going to call it film but that would be an insult to every other movie ever created. Just don't watch this.

Nothing is related to the original, it is awful don't watch

In the event that you ended up here without having seen the first movie, please watch The Jerk first and this movie never.

Despite this being called The Jerk, Too, it in no way whatsoever advances the plot of the first movie, first and this movie instead starting over with Navin leaving his sharecropper family. I was like "Okay, so it's a remake?" but it's not even that; Navin never ends up at Jackie Mason's garage, never invents Opti-Grab, never gets rich, and never gets sued into bankruptancy. He never even becomes a jerk!

Instead, he and Marie already know each other as pen pals and he basically becomes Rain Man for two scenes before he finally gets around to infiltrating Marie's wedding since the guy she's marrying is misogynistic twit. There's also a musical number that comes out of nowhere and serves no purpose aside from padding out the film. The only thing that brings even an inkling of excitement is a car chase where a Cadillac limousine somehow can't catch up to an ice cream van.

Literally the only connections this movie even has to The Jerk are the title, the main character is named Navin and was raised by a poor black family and his love interest is named Marie. No Mr. Hortunion, no sadistic biker babe, no Opti-Grab, no mansion, not even S***head the dog appears. Unlike The Jerk, the black family never appears again after Navin leaves. Aside from the obvious stuff like they're both feature-length movies, both have humans in them, etc, this movie is completely unrelated to the first. Literally the only reason anyone even knows it exists is because of the name.

Mark Blankfield is wasted here. Check out Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again if you want to see how funny he can be.

I can't believe this movie exists.

Me and my friends ran into it on TV and watched the whole thing.

This movie really does address problems of the first "Jerk". For example, the first Jerk didn't have enough silly crosseyed faces. Thankfully "the Jerk Too" makes up for this in plentiful amounts. Also the original "Jerk" had too many jokes. Luckily, "the Jerk Too" knows when to draw the line. The jokes fly by at about one every 20 minutes, whew, just enough time to catch your breath in between laughing so hard! At the crosseyed faces!

Why is this movie so dark? I don't mean grim or gothic. I mean they seemed to only have key lights and left out the fill lights. Every scene has pitch black backgrounds, where you can only see the actors in the foreground. Ever notice how movies with a lot of pitch black makes you want to go to sleep? Or at their best, make you feel like they are hiding something, something mysterious or scary. This is how the Jerk makes you feel -- sleepy and afraid.

The music is bizarre. The first half of the movie is a horrible 70s comedy soundtrack...wacky light hearted music that comes and goes whenever it feels like it. It usually covers up the long montages of city scapes that take up a lot of time in script-deprived films like this. BUT THEN the music starts turning more into an 80s sound...pumping bass and fake heavily reverbed drums. Very odd.

The most fascinating scene was the classic Hobos vs. Bum dramatic monologue towards the end of the movie. Sure, there aren't ANY jokes in this very long scene, SURE, it doesn't help further the plot, it has nothing to do with the main character, and it brings up issues that were otherwise completely absent from the rest of the film. But on it's own, without the context of the bad movie, it's a pretty interesting scenario. I just can't figure out what it's doing in this movie.

Basically when a bunch of hobos are together and planning a way to rescue the jerk, one hobo declares opposition to the plan. "Why should I help him, nobody helps us!" The lead hobo then goes on a VERY lengthy speech about the difference between a hobo and a bum. It is VERY repetitive and adds NOTHING NOTHING NOOOOOTHING to the film. IT'S SO WEIRD.

So to sum up : No jokes, no lights, a lot of "Hobo #3" character development in one scene.

You can never have seen either film and still know that The Jerk Too is a disaster. The question is not, "How did it get made," because if you throw money at anyone and tell them to make a film, they will do so.

No. The question is "Why, oh why, did Steve Martin allow it to be made?" I think he needed the money to fight a nuisance lawsuit and was determined it not cost him anything. He knew the sequel was going to be so frightful, that out of pride, he wouldn't even count it's royalties as income.

The only way this sequel could not be an embarrassment is to have had Carl Gottlieb and Steve Martin revive the nation's favorite poor black family.

And "dcreasy2001" (aka Mark Blankfield?): It's just transparently obvious that you worked on this film in some sad capacity, and the only way you can feel better about your involvement is to be the sequel's lone cheerleader as an IMDb user comment. I was praying for you to veer over into satire, but alas, you were really making an effort at spin. Why not 10 stars?