The Jerk [HD DVD]

That wild and crazy guy, Steve Martin, makes his film-starring debut in the wacky comedy hit The Jerk. Steve plays Navin Johnson, the adopted son of a poor black sharecropper family, whose crazy inventions lead him from rags to riches…right back to rags. Steve propels Navin through a string of misadventures-becoming smitten with a lady motorcycle racer, surviving a series of screwball attacks by a deranged killer, and becoming a millionaire by inventing the "Opti-grab" handle for eyeglasses-and shows why he's one of the hottest comic performers in the world.

Carl Reiner (Where's Poppa?) brought comic Steve Martin to the screen in this mostly funny 1979 movie about a relentlessly stupid but innocent man, whom we get to know from childhood (where it never occurred to him that he was white as he was raised by a family of black sharecroppers) to romance (where he doesn't quite know what to do with Bernadette Peters). Martin is game as the moron, and this is the kind of film with funny moments people still talk about. --Tom Keogh