The Jerk
1979
Carl Reiner
I'm a little weary about reading other reviews and opinions about the movies I watch for this column, at least until I formulate my own opinion and get it down into words on the blog. But I made an exception for The Jerk, mainly because I was confused, and needed answers. The main point of confusion for me was this: why don't I find this shit funny at all?
Luckily, our one true master Roger Ebert had the answer for me. No one could get to the heart of the matter more quickly and effortlessly than he could. (Also—thank god he found The Jerk as unfunny as I did, or else we'd still probably be searching for answers.) I had all these feelings about The Jerk, mostly negative, that I found I was unable to articulate.
The way Roger Ebert explained was a simple two word phrase: "funny hat." Ebert's Funny Hat Theory explains the difference between something presenting itself as funny for what it is (funny hat) versus something presenting itself as funny for why it is (funny logic). The example he gives is when Steve Martin's character Navin Johnson leaves home and attempts to hitchhike, he is wearing a bomber's helmet and goggles. Ebert is supposing—and he's dead on—that there is a certain type of person who would just find the idea of some random idiot wearing WWII goggles as inherently funny, but then there is another type of person who needs to know why he is wearing the helmet to think it's funny.
For better or worse, I'm in the latter. Nothing wrong with finding a funny hat funny, mind you. It's a different strokes for different folks situation. The Jerk is wall-to-wall funny hats. I rarely laughed.
I mean, I guess the more I think about it, the more I'm wondering if a joke can be both. Can a joke look like a funny hat and still utilize funny logic? That might explain the only single time I laughed during this movie. There's an extended bit in which Navin has invented a little handle to help you pull your glasses off your face without bending the frame (don't ask because there's no other information to explain, it's a funny hat, there is no why he invented this), and so it turns out that this invention has caused almost ten million people in America to go cross eyed. And Navin says something like "it's okay that people are suing me, I'll be tried by a jury of my peers who will be fair and impartial" and the movie smash-cuts to the foreman announcing the guilty verdict, and the foreman is also cross eyed.
In the grand scope of the movie, it's a funny hat, because ultimately The Jerk is asking you to laugh at the sight of a man whose eyes are crossed, which they imply is inherently funny (it is not), and it is framed in the funny hat of the titular jerk inventing a dangerous invention for your glasses, which has no basis in anything that we know about the character so far, it's just something he does, and so, ha ha, funny? But then the specific joke under that funny hat regarding the foreman who is cross eyed is actually kind of funny, because it follows logic, and then twists that logic. Logically, you really would imagine that there would be an impartial jury who would fairly deliver a verdict, but then the logic is turned on its head with the reveal that at least one member of the jury was personally affected by the charge that the defendant was brought in on in the first place, and so, logically, the jury won't be impartial. Hence, the sincere laugh. Not a loud or hearty laugh, but credit where credit is due.
I am extremely uncomfortable with the presumption that I'm sitting here trying to explain humor to you. I do not proclaim to be knowledgeable on the subject. I'm just going into more detail than I normally would about a joke to underline a point that Ebert makes. There's a reason I found The Jerk incredibly unpleasant and unamusing, and it's not because I'm a miserable jerkoff. It's just because there are different styles of humor, and The Jerk employed the style of humor that I find pretty simple-minded.
I mean, it's not even like I could never, under any circumstances, find a funny hat to be funny. I think a lot about absurdist humor, something like The Eric Andre Show, for example. There is zero logic to anything that happens on that show. Like The Jerk, it's a bunch of random shit happening. The difference, I think, is how far each respective art form takes the bit. The Jerk's funny hat is supposed to be funny because it has a silly purple flower affixed to the brim; The Eric Andre Show's funny hat is supposed to be funny because it's smeared in literal horseshit and Eric is shooting through it with a machine gun and he's naked and now he's trying to convince a celebrity like Dominic Monaghan to eat the hat, and then the camera cuts to Hannibal Buress shitting on the hat some more. None of those elements are necessarily funny in isolation, because they are just funny hats, but it works because the hats are piled so high and they look so ridiculous that you start laughing at the insanity itself. It's like there are so many funny hats that now you're laughing at the fact that there are too many funny hats, not the funny hats themselves.
Again... I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm just trying to cover all my bases here. The Jerk wasn't funny, and yet it's ranked in the Top 100 Comedies of All Time by the American Film Institute. Why? I asked the same question about Blazing Saddles a couple years ago, and I think they are kind of similar in this regard. There weren't as many Funny Hats in Blazing Saddles, and there were definitely more moments that were funny because of the Funny Logic. Not many! But a few, like the "ya know... morons" line, or the crazy fourth-wall-breaking ending. Plus, The Jerk only had one use of the N-word that was intended to be funny but has aged horribly. I say "only" like there is any number above zero that is okay. There isn't. I'm just saying comparatively, we can't lay all of The Jerk's woes at the feet of racism like we can Blazing Saddles.
No, I think what I applied to Blazing Saddles should also be applied to The Jerk—the Elvis Theory. Shit, I really need to write a one-paragraph blog post that I can subsequently link to whenever I bring this theory up, because it's cumbersome to feel like I need to explain it every time I mention. But for those just joining us on the blog, the "Elvis Theory" is my name for the phenomenon of exploring older art and feeling like you can't appreciate as much because you already are familiar with the art that that original art influenced. E.g. I love rock 'n' roll in many of its forms, starting from the '60s up until today, but I can't fucking stand Elvis Presley's music, even though if it weren't for Elvis, NONE of the rock music I enjoy would even exist, and even though you can CLEARLY hear the influence of Elvis in some of the earlier rock music of the '60s. Make sense?
So I think that at least partially applies here. I acknowledge the fact that there would be a lot of comedy that didn't exist today if it weren't for The Jerk, especially some of the absurdist stuff that I'm partial to. I don't think it was funny, but I'm glad it exists so that others could take some of its lessons and improve the formula. I'm also glad that I know I'm not the only one who thought it sucked ass.
Miscellaneous notes before we hit the road:
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- I was really excited to see Alfred Dennis on my screen again after watching him steal the show as "Old Jake" in "Grannies Gone Wild." For real. I was fucking pumped to see him. So I find it utterly hilarious that when Alfred finally showed up, it was for three seconds, and for the entirety of those three seconds his character had one of those makeup facemasks on. Completely unrecognizable. I love it. Such a Jake move.
- For the second time in three movies, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky came up in conversation. It was quoted directly in It Follows. For The Jerk, apparently Steve Martin based the title of the movie on The Idiot. Get it? Not an idiot, but a jerk instead? Yeah... the joke is about on par with the rest of the jokes in this goddamn movie.
- I've always thought that Steve Martin was also the least funny part of The Muppet Movie, in which he plays a waiter who is upset at Kermit and Miss Piggy for some reason. It's always been just confusing to me, like, what's this guy's deal? Why is he angry? Well, at least the Funny Hat Theory explains it. Why is he angry? Because that's what the joke is. He's angry. And that's funny...?
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GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: Show me the money, I think? We're watching Jerry Maguire.
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