Steve Martin was never that guy. Steve Martin was either my personal Lord and Savior Navin Johnson, or an uptight middle-ager who lived in a really nice house in Chicago and wore sweaters with John Candy. Actually, he did that in every single movie made in the 1980s except for "Minority Report", in which Tom Cruise eats a rotten sandwich.

I've probably only seen about five Steve Martin movies, but it's my opinion that if you have to give a guy more than five chances to showcase himself, he probably has a second head growing out of his neck or something. You see, I had to add "growing out of his neck" because I wanted to avoid the stupid fucking "BY OTHER HEAD YOU MEAN PENIS AM I RIGHTE" crowd from laughing so hard that they spooge all over the monitor and mess up my beautiful website. I bet if they made a movie about that incident, they would call it

"The Jerk" was Martin at his best. Everyone has seen this movie except for former California Angels pitcher Jim Abbott, whose mushy deformed hand can't operate a VCR without getting caught in the tape drive. The title "The Jerk" really didn't fit the movie very well; on the contrary, Navin Johnson was quiet a nice guy. His meal of choice was two Twinkies and a Tab, or whatever the hell it was, and that was awesome, because irregular diet = laughs. Which is why Ally McBeal was a one-hour-long, sphincter-cut, unfunny piece of shit. Everyone ate perfectly healthy, balanced diets. The situational comedy of "The Jerk" was really something to aspire to, from Navin being a graying twentysomething man living with a black family, to latching a church onto a Chevy which pulls it down the street (LITERALLY, not figuratively!), to inventing a paper clip that fucks up peoples' eyes, to throwing popcorn at an actor too obscure to allude to another role, which would have resulted in comedic payoff. "To throwing popcorn at the counselor from 'Camp Nowhere'." See? Doesn't work. Now if it were Christopher Reeve, THAT would have been funny, because he might have even tried to catch the popcorn with his mouth or colostomy bag or something. And with that, I've just achieved the Triple Crown of Offensiveness by lampooning anatomical deformity, anorexia, and paralysis in a single paragraph. Fuck you Carl Yastremski; you were in the American League and didn't even have to hit against Bob Gibson that year. I could have batted higher than .301 with my dick.

Somewhere in the 1980's, he became an uptight, sweater-wearing middle-aged man. He's stayed true to this character ever since, and most of the comedy in the resulting flicks can be summed up with the sentence "I, Steve Martin, am uncomfortable with ______ !" Several examples of this are:

I am traveling with this fat man, and that makes me uncomfortable!

"Father of the Bride"

My daughter is getting married, and that makes me uncomfortable!

"Father of the Bride 2"

I knocked up my wife, and that makes me uncomfortable!

"Housesitter"

This woman is pretending to be my wife, and that makes me uncomfortable!

"The Out-of-Towners"

I am not familiar with this city, and that makes me uncomfortable!

I think the ideal role for Steve Martin to play would be a man who wears shoes three sizes too small, sleeps on a slab of construction-grade steel, and drives around in a Geo Metro. Of course, on all the movie posters he would have to make that terrified grimace while the token female lead gives him a great big hug. And he would have a nervous breakdown whenever he couldn't find a clean towel or buy hot dog buns in packages of eight.

So what's left for an uptight, sweater-wearing middle-aged man to be uncomfortable with?

This is the role that the post-erection-difficulty Steve Martin was meant for, which is too bad, because

b) "Bringing Down The House" fails to "Bring" the laughs! turn to page 58

c) I ain't "down" with this "house"! turn to page 62

Which one did you choose?  Really?  Great!

I'm sure you've all at least seen the previews. I can honestly say that after seeing the trailer, there was no movie I wanted to see less. The latest Hollywood trend seems to be the "fish-out-of-water" formula. In the same sitting, I saw trailers for "Bringing Down The House", "Boat Trip" (Cuba Gooding Jr. pretends to be gay, but he isn't!), "Head of State" (Chris Rock is running for President, but he shouldn't be!), and "Basic" (John Travolta is in a movie, but he can't act!). I really hate it when the comedy industry almost universally gravitates toward a given joke, and that's what's happened here. In case you're not familiar with the plot of "Bringing Down The House", Steve Martin is a wealthy plantation owner in the South during the Civil War, and his whole world is turned upside down when General Sherman's artillery unit mistakes Queen Latifah for a cannonball and fires her into his house. And no matter how much he tries, he can't get her out, because she's so goddamn heavy. I admit, this isn't really what happens in the movie, but I'm doing you a favor, believe me.

I don't know, maybe Steve Martin thought the movie would be entirely different than it turned out to be. That is, different from a vehicle for some of the most terrible pop-culture cliches spawned in the last three years.

Iraq

It sure was wonderful for Steve Martin to show everyone that it was okay to laugh following the tragic events of 9-11/Gulf War 2! He did this expertly by answering, "It's a country!" when his son asked him what a rack was. Notice the play on words there? He's playfully acknowledging things that are ripped straight from the headlines. I can't believe how many people in the theater laughed at that.

Eugene Levy

Did you know that any movie with Eugene Levy in it is instantly funny? He's just got that quirky demeanor that everyone likes, and whenever I see him in a movie I think, "Hey, it's Jim's dad!" On second thought, I actually yell it at the movie screen loud enough for people two theaters over to hear me. You know how everyone has those favorite "cult actors" -- those actors that you, and only you, seem to appreciate? Well, mine is Eugene Levy, Hollywood's best-kept secret! You probably don't know his name now, but you will soon!

Wiggers

When I heard Eugene Levy say to Queen Latifah, "You've got me straight trippin, boo!" I almost swallowed my own mouth! That was so crazy! The only thing that could have made that moment funnier was if they were eating turkey and Saddam Hussein walked in and asked what they were having for dinner and Queen Latifah said, "It's a country!" and Saddam said, "Osama yo' mama!" and did the Macarena.

YARR. AHEAD THERE BE SPOILERS. SHIVER ME TIMBERS.

The movie also managed to resolve the climax by using the old "item of note stopping the bullet" trick. In this case, Queen Latifah's life was saved by a cell phone in her bra that she stole from Steve Martin, which, by the way, is funny and typical since black people like to steal things.

This movie really isn't worth getting into all that much, other for than to illustrate that it's a bucket full of ass. It's a shame, Steve Martin is a funny guy, and he was once in some very funny movies. Now, to end this article, I thought about proposing a new movie project for Steve Martin that would be so ridiculously stupid that it couldn't be topped. Unfortunately, after I prepared the cast list, wrote the screenplay, designed the ads, and came up with the title, it was "Bringing Down The House". Except instead of Mrs. Wilson as the rich bigoted Southern hag, it was Dennis the Menace. And Steve Martin's retard kid wore a T-Shirt that said "The 2003 Super Bowl Champion Detroit Tigers." And Queen Latifah, instead of getting hit in the cell phone, got shot in the vagina and nine months later gave birth to this guy who can gain access inside any building by just chewing through walls. He's that strong.

So how can I possibly end this? Well, I...

Whoops! Is it time for Page 80 already?

After turning to make sure no one's around, you enter the cave with caution. "A time portal's supposed to be inside of this cave? Yeah, right!" you say to yourself. As one would expect a cave to be, it's damp and dark. You don't get more than fifty feet inside the cave before you trip and fall into a pit! Everything goes black. The next thing you see is the smiling face of a kindly old man, who offers you a bed and plate of lamb inside his ramshackle house. You learn that you are in England in the 1400s. Without a means to return, you resign yourself to a simple life as a fisherman. Fifty years later, you die an old man, always wondering what would have been...

THE END