Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
The Jerk (film)
The Jerk (1979) is Carl Reiner's rags-to-riches film comedy of belated self-discovery. Steve Martin stars. The film also features Bernadette Peters, M. Emmett Walsh , Jackie Mason, and Trinidad Silva . Reiner has a cameo appearance and his son Rob Reiner has an uncredited bit part.
Navin Johnson (Martin) is the adopted white son of black sharecroppers, who grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of the fact of his adoption, then goes into the world to make his fortune.
The characters include a variety of ethnic stereotypes: simple-minded rural blacks, redneck whites, Hispanic con men, greedy Jews. However, the stereotypes are so blatant that their inclusion in the film could be considered as the filmmakers' ironic comment on the evils of stereotyping.
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