The movie that made Steve Martin a household name, the Jerk took audiences by surprise with its over the top comedy, immediately launching the next phase of the comedian’s career and turning him into a film star overnight. The next time you want to laugh til it hurts, put The Jerk on your movie downloads queue. Directed by Carl Reiner, it’s one of those classic films you need to see sometime in your life.

Martin wrote and stars as Navin R. Johnson, a “poor black child” from the south. He’s never quite been able to fully appreciate the blues music his family is into, and one night, he hears what amounts to elevator music on the radio… His feet start tapping, it’s white people music! He has to go out there and find his place in the world. From there, it’s a rags to riches to rags and back again story that essentially serves as little more than a clothesline for Martin and the director, Carl Reiner, to hang some ridiculous scenes of comic excess.

Johnson is one of the all time great comic heroes. Simple, mundane situations are elevated by Johnson’s weird perception. It’s a classic staple of comedy that the hero misunderstands what happens to them, but Johnson just… Really doesn’t get it. There’s no situation simple enough for him to understand, and he always gets the wrong idea. Formulaic? Sure, but also wildly funny.

The hilarious and stunningly beautiful Bernadette Peters co-stars as Navin’s girlfriend, then wife, then ex wife, then wife, and she somehow manages to create a character that can be just as wacky as Martin’s while still playing straight man to his goofiness when the need arises.

Again, every scene’s a classic. Everyone quotes the “I don’t need anything but this!” scene, but it’s hardly the movie’s best sequence. The whole cat juggling scene really shouldn’t be watched by anyone with a heart condition, or you may just laugh your way to the hospital.

Martin’s follow up films, The Man With Two Brains and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid… They had their moments, they’re worth watching, but they never really achieved the consistent, beginning-to-end hilarity of The Jerk.

Since then, Martin has gone on to explore all sorts of realms of entertainment and art, with his novel Shop Girl, his own bluegrass music career, and even penning the script for the recent non-comedy film, Traitor, a taut political thriller starring Don Cheadle. Even with all of these other accomplishments, The Jerk is likely to go down as the movie he’s remembered for.

Without a doubt: One of the funniest movies ever made. If you want to laugh yourself into the hospital, make sure you watch it sometime soon. Again, it is, without a doubt, one of the funniest movies ever, and some say perhaps the funniest movie ever made. Of course, that’s your call to make, since it really is subjective, but… If you don’t find this movie to be absolutely hilarious, then sorry, but your opinion is wrong!

Customers buy when they feel an emotion NOT when they’ve had information dumped on them. Block Buster Movie Rental Watching movies has always been on the top 10 chart of the most popular leisure activities in America. How about getting them on your computer screens, looking alive’