Review: The Jerk, Too
DVD: The Jerk, Too (1984)
The Jerk, Too isn’t so much a sequel to the 1979 Steve Martin comedy classic The Jerk, but reimagines the story of Navin who sets out to travel from his humble family abode in the country to the big bright lights of Los Angeles. Apparently this was the pilot show of a potential television series starring Navin. Why didn’t the series happen? Allow me to explain…
Navin (Mark Blankfield…who looks like he could be the look-a-like creation of Marty Feldman and Gene Wilder while on the set of Young Frankenstein, whereby they inserted the brain of ‘Abbie Normal’ but were clearly too preoccupied when it came time to insert even a fraction of their comedy acting chops) is a simple (in every sense of the word) man who lives with his family in the country. Nathan is white and his family is black…that’s the first gag and it doesn’t get any better or any more sophisticated than that. He sets out on a trip to Los Angeles to attend the wedding of his pen pal Marie (Stacey Neilkin) (Do you remember pen pals? For the benefit of younger readers; it was like a paper version of Snap Chat…only not quite as instant). The trip does not go as smoothly as planned and a series of ‘hilarious’ events happen along the way.
You’re always going to be up against it when making a sequel/reimagining to a well loved movie, but even if the original The Jerk didn’t exist, this would still be looked upon unfavourably. The acting is terrible, especially by Mark Blankfield who insists on overacting to the extreme, even turning a relatively simple pratfall into something that would be scored highly if doing the same movements from a high diving board in the Olympics. His gurning face contorting into ‘comedy’ faces at every opportunity just makes you want to slap his features back into a some sort of normality, while at the same time yelling at him to turn it all down a notch or two…or twelve.
The end of the movie is telegraphed right from the moment that Navin goes off to meet Marie, and the climax of it all is a big custard pie fight…I told you it didn’t get sophisticated.
If this review of The Jerk, Too has made you chuckle at least once, then that’s once more than the entire 95 minute running time did for me. If I was to play devils advocate with myself, then I could possibly recommend it to kids in the 6-10 age range, or possibly adults that have come back inebriated from a night on the town and want to watch something completely stupid that won’t test their currently addled brain capabilities, and more importantly, they will have no memory of watching it the next day.
One for movie masochists only.
The Jerk, Too will be released on 4th September 2017 and you can buy it by clicking HERE. ALL money raised by purchasing from Amazon via our website is given back to our listeners and followers in upcoming competition prizes. The more people buy, the bigger our prizes!
Review by Dave (host of 60 Minutes With) from a disc kindly supplied by Fabulous Films.
Watch a clip from the original instead…
