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By 1979, the disaster movie genre was almost dead thanks to The Swarm, Beyond The Poseidon Adventure, and Meteor being complete flops. This movie's premise is kind of ridiculous, but is it any more ridiculous than Airport 1975, or Concorde: Airport '79?

I am surprised to see so many negative reviews slamming this film for it's lack of realism. Compared to Armageddon, where the head of a drilling crew strong-arms the US government into training drillers to be astronauts instead of the US Gov just using ICBMs to knock the big scary space rock off it's course, this film can get a pass.

If you see here for fire and explosions, the film is more than happy to deliver! Before the big city gets set on fire, we're treated to a building fire caused by a chucked cigarette. Certain ChromaKey effects aren't too good, but the suspense and action are very well done, as are the majority of the practical effects. This movie does have several moments which may frighten younger viewers so take that into consideration.

Over all, if you've already seen the MAJOR disaster movies of the '70s and are looking for something good amongst the lesser-known disaster movies, this one will definitely scratch your itch. Great popcorn fun!

In the event that you ended up here without having seen the first movie, please watch The Jerk first and this movie never.

Despite this being called The Jerk, Too, it in no way whatsoever advances the plot of the first movie, first and this movie instead starting over with Navin leaving his sharecropper family. I was like "Okay, so it's a remake?" but it's not even that; Navin never ends up at Jackie Mason's garage, never invents Opti-Grab, never gets rich, and never gets sued into bankruptancy. He never even becomes a jerk!

Instead, he and Marie already know each other as pen pals and he basically becomes Rain Man for two scenes before he finally gets around to infiltrating Marie's wedding since the guy she's marrying is misogynistic twit. There's also a musical number that comes out of nowhere and serves no purpose aside from padding out the film. The only thing that brings even an inkling of excitement is a car chase where a Cadillac limousine somehow can't catch up to an ice cream van.

Literally the only connections this movie even has to The Jerk are the title, the main character is named Navin and was raised by a poor black family and his love interest is named Marie. No Mr. Hortunion, no sadistic biker babe, no Opti-Grab, no mansion, not even S***head the dog appears. Unlike The Jerk, the black family never appears again after Navin leaves. Aside from the obvious stuff like they're both feature-length movies, both have humans in them, etc, this movie is completely unrelated to the first. Literally the only reason anyone even knows it exists is because of the name.

Mark Blankfield is wasted here. Check out Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again if you want to see how funny he can be.