Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

Uneven comedy directed by John Hughes and starring Steve Martin and John Candy.

Martin plays a tense marketing executive hoping to get home for Thanksgiving. He finds his efforts thwarted by severe weather, plane cancellations, traffic chaos and other frustrations. Candy, who travels with him, is a salesman who means well but has annoying habits. The film explores their strained relationship as Martin slowly becomes more tolerant and accepting of his companion. There’s also a class thing going on, with the well-to-do Martin sneering at someone who has less than him yet who is more in touch with his emotions. 

There are some very funny moments, but other parts don’t work – such as an aggressive scene in which Martin swears at a woman in a car-rental company. This really jars and stands out as a misjudgement. 

Kevin Bacon has a baffling cameo as a New Yorker running for a cab. Because he’s a famous actor I expected him to pop up again later, but he never did.

Parenthood (1989)

Brilliant mixture of comedy and drama on the subject of family relationships, directed by the always-reliable Ron Howard. 

Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen are superb as a couple with three children, one of whom is suffering emotional problems. Meanwhile Dianne Wiest is a single mother struggling with two teenage children and her daughter’s relationship with the hopeless Keanu Reeves. Rick Moranis plays a father trying to raise his young daughter as a genius. Jason Robards (who plays Steve Martin’s dad) has to face up to the fact that his other son is addicted to gambling. 

A superbly written script dovetails these characters’ fates and elegantly weaves together multiple narrative threads without letting them get too tangled. 

Some of the scenes are genuinely moving, and there’s no doubting the truth of their insights into human experience, but crucially Parenthood is very funny as well.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)

Charming comedy starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin as two rival con artists working in the south of France. Both actors are on top form. Also great is Glenne Headly as Janet Colgate, the woman they try to cheat out of $50,000. 

There are lots of laughs, some of them subtle and some of them silly, but it’s surprisingly sophisticated in places. 

Ian “Emperor Palpatine” McDiarmid plays a butler.

The Man with Two Brains (1983)

Absolutely daft comedy with hints of cartoonish sci-fi and horror homage. 

Steve Martin plays a brilliant but naive brain surgeon with the unpronounceable name Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr. Kathleen Turner is Dolores Benedict, who marries him for his money. The doctor meets an eccentric scientist (David Warner), who is keeping human brains alive and may have found a way to transplant them into other bodies. He then falls in love with one of the brains (voiced by Sissy Spacek) and ends up running off with it. 

It sounds ridiculous and it is – deliberately. There are some funny moments and a few scenes that fall flat. It’s not quite as sharp as The Jerk (1979) or Lonely Guy (1984), but Martin and Turner are both hugely appealing and watchable throughout.

It’s Complicated (2009)

Rom-com with little rom and and even less com. It’s not even very complicated.

Divorcee Jane (Meryl Streep) begins an “affair” with her own ex-husband (Alec Baldwin). But she’s also drawn to the architect she hired to make her huge home even bigger (Steve Martin). 

The film is directed by Nancy Meyers, who was responsible for Something’s Gotta Give, and very much follows the formula of that earlier film. But whereas that was just about salvaged by the talents of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, this film has to survive on the abilities of Streep alone. Baldwin is oddly repulsive (it’s not clear how much of that is intentional), while Martin seems bland and underwritten. 

These smug, wealthy people are difficult to like. That’s not helped by the shallow way the film addresses a potentially interesting web of relationships. But it’s not a story about how people actually are. Instead, it seems to be an aspirational exercise about how you too can be wealthy, have a huge home, have lots of friends, be loved by everyone and have a top-quality job that’s both well-paid and endlessly rewarding. 

There’s a bottom line of watchability with Streep, but that’s not enough this time.

The Lonely Guy (1984)

Very sweet, very funny Steve Martin comedy that’s fairly similar in tone to The Jerk. He plays Larry Hubbard, a New Yorker ditched by his girlfriend only to find that single life in the city is no fun. He uncovers what’s almost a secret society of “lonely guys” – single men jumping off bridges, talking to houseplants and desperately hoping their lost loves will return.

It’s a mark of Steve Martin’s skill that such a potentially taboo subject makes for such a hilarious film. There are many laugh-out-loud moments and it’s genuinely heartwarming. The silliness does not stop it from achieving genuine profundity. And Charles Grodin and Judith Ivey are endearing as his friend and new sweetheart.

The Jerk (1979)

Wildly original comedy starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. It brilliantly parodies the familiar rags-to-riches life story that makes up so many conventional narratives. There are some extremely funny moments, but for such an absurd story it’s also unexpectedly touching. The scene on the beach in which Navin (Martin) and Marie (Peters) sing to each other is hugely romantic, and the latter is particularly strong in this film.

There are many hilarious moments but my favourite is probably when Steve Martin reads out the “farewell” letter from Marie. It has got wet from the bathwater and the ink has run, so what he reads out is total gibberish.

A timeless gem that still seems fresh almost 40 years on.

Roxanne (1987)

Lovely romantic comedy: a retelling of the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Steve Martin plays the wonderfully gifted fire chief for the small town of Nelson, who just happens to have a huge nose. He falls in love with a visiting astronomer, Roxanne (Daryl Hannah), who unfortunately is drawn to a good-looking dimwit instead. The love story is just part of the charm. There’s so much touching detail about how the people of the town live their lives, from the inept volunteer firemen to the various characters you get to know in Nelson’s bars, shops and cafés. Steve Martin is riveting as the aerobic, intellectual, poetic fire chief who eventually wins over the woman he loves. It’s heartwarming but also very funny for much of the time.