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Square Pegs


            Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin) is a dim-witted White man who was adopted as an infant by a poor rural southern Black family. Never able to follow the beat of Rhythm and Blues or Gospel, one day as a young man he hears a Lawrence Welk song on the radio and able to follow the beat, he realizes there is more to the world than the 2 room shack they live in, and he decides to go out into the world to seek his fortune.He hitch-hikes to St. Louis where an overtly Jewish gas station owner, Mr. Hartounian (Jackie Mason), gives him a job and a back room to stay in. Navin starts sending a little money home to his adoptive family whenever he can. While pumping gas, Navin comes up with a fix for a fast-talking salesman customer whose eyeglasses keep slipping off his nose. It is a wire loop with a nose brace. The grateful man thinks he can market the invention and promises Navin 50% of any profits. Navin gets into the local phone book, from which a crazed gunowner (M. Emmet Walsh) randomly picks him as a target for assassination. Navin is shot at, but manages to flee, and winds up in a carnival trailer heading out of town.Navin gets a job as a weight-guesser with the carnival, and loses his virginity to a stunt-daredevil woman. He meets and falls in love with a carnival goer, Marie (Bernadette Peters), a cosmetologist. They get married on the spur of the moment by the first legally authorized person they can find to perform the ceremony, who happens to be a Black Witch Doctor.The salesman tracks Navin down with a Private Eye who happens to be the crazed assassin gone straight. Navin's invention has been a huge success and Navin starts getting checks for large sums of money. He hires servants and then purchases an extravagant mansion. Just as it look as if life cannot get any better, he is sued by purchasers of the "Opti-Grab" device. Apparently, it makes wearers cross-eyed. Navin loses all his money, and wanders off to become a homeless bum. Marie dumps him and he is heartbroken.At the film's end, his Black family and Marie find him on skid row. Apparently his foster-father had invested the relatively modest sums of money Navin sent home from his various jobs, and the family is much better off. In the closing scene, we see that they have built a much-larger unpainted shack to replace the old one.
    

The Jerk


            Yussel Rabinovitch (Neil Diamond) is a young Jewish cantor performing at the synagogue of his imperious father Cantor Rabinovitch (Laurence Olivier). Yussel is married to his childhood friend, Rivka (Caitlin Adams), and has settled down to a life of religious devotion to the teaching of his faith.But on the side, he writes songs for a black singing group, and when a member of the quartet takes ill, Yussel covers for him at one of their gigs by wearing black-face. The nightclub engagement is a success, but one of the patrons at the nightclub notices that Yussel's hands are white and calls him out. A fight ensues and the band is arrested. Yussel's father comes to the jail to bail them out and finds out that there is not a Yussel Rabinovitch there but a Jess Robin. His father questions him about this later and Yussel tells him it is a professional stage name he uses when performing. His father tells him that his singing voice was to be used for God's purposes, not his own.Bubba (Franklyn Ajay), a member of the "Four Brothers" singing group, is Yussel's best friend, although he knows him as 'Jess'; Bubba informs him that the band has got a gig in Los Angeles performing back up vocals for a successful singer, Keith Lennox (Paul Nichols). Shortly after Bubba leaves, Yussel begins composing a song that will eventually become "Love on the Rocks". His wife Rivka notices him writing the song in his free time and senses that Yussel yearns for a bigger stage for his voice, but her values keep her grounded to the home life they have built together.Bubba calls Jess from LA and informs him that Lennox really loved "Love on the Rocks" and wants to record it, but they need Jess to come out for two weeks to oversee the recording session. Jess finally sees this as the opportunity he has been waiting for, but his wife and his father are opposed to him going. But later at a bar mitzvah his father relents and tearfully lets him go.When Jess arrives in Los Angeles, he is picked from the airport up by music agent Molly Bell (Lucie Arnaz). She takes him to the studio where Lennox is recording, and Jess is shocked to find out that his ballad is now being recorded as a hard rock song. During a break in recording, Jess asks the producer and Lennox if he can perform the song as a ballad, as he intended, so Lennox can get an idea of the framing of the song. They allow him to do it, and while recording the song, Molly decides that Jess's performance is the way the song should be done. However, Lennox is not convinced and fires the group.Later, Molly gets a tip from a friend as to where a booking agent, Eddie Gibbs (Sully Boyer), is having lunch. She gets into his car, uninvited, and has him listen to Jess's recording of "Love on the Rocks". When Eddie asks her who it is, Molly tells him that it is the new opening act for Zane Gray's new television special. Gibbs is not amused and says he can't book anyone from just a tape recording sight unseen. However, she manages to get Eddie to visit a club where Jess has managed to get a gig playing, thanks to Bubba, who is working there as a waiter. Eddie comes in and watches him performing "Amazed and Confused" and then leaves. Jess thinks he has blown it, but Molly tells him "..he hates loud music... you he loved... you open for Zane Gray."Meanwhile, back in New York, Cantor Rabinovich confronts Rivka about Jess going to California, and reminds her that her place is by her husband's side, and if she goes to California, maybe she can bring him home. She relents and goes.On Jess's opening night, as he performs the songs "Summer Love" and "Hey Louise", Rivka shows up and meets Molly, and tries to tell her that their Jewish values are such that Jess cannot possibly stay. The audience gives Jess a standing ovation, and he heads backstage and is reunited with Rivka. At the after party, Jess is met by an enthusiastic crowd and is given a recording contract. Despite Jess asking her to stay, Rivka says she wants something different. Realizing she has lost him, she leaves before Jess can catch her.Days later, Jess meets up with Molly by the Santa Monica pier and confesses his love for her, telling her that he and Rivka have split up. As time passes, the two grow closer to each other while Jess's career continues steadily. His father shows up to visit him and attempts to persuade him to go back home, but Jess refuses, insisting that he's making a name for himself with his music career. Jess reveals that he and Rivka are divorcing, which devastates his father. To make matters worse, Molly suddenly arrives home. Jess tries to explain the matter to his father, but to no avail, as he angrily disowns his son and leaves in tears.Emotionally broken by the incident, Jess struggles at his recording sessions, taking out his anger on his band mates, until he finally storms out and drives away aimlessly. When his car runs out of gas on the highway, he hitchhikes far away for a few weeks, taking up singing at a country bar somewhere in Texas for the next few months. Eventually, he returns home to Molly when Bubba tracks him down and tells him that she has given birth to a son. Molly once again meets Eddie Gibbs in his car and persuades him to let Jess perform on Zane Gray's television special.At rehearsal, the day before Yom Kippur, Leo shows up and tells Jess that his father is in the hospital with high blood pressure and won't be able to sing Kol Nidre at the synagogue. Jess is initially reluctant to go to his father, vowing that he is dead to him, but Molly insists that he go back to him or else she'll feel guilty about it. Jess ultimately agrees and returns to sing at the synagogue. He tries to make amends with his father, but he refuses to speak to Jess, until Jess tells him that he now has a grandson, at which point they finally reconcile.The film ends with Jess performing "America", with his father and Molly in attendance.
    

Catlin Adams

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