In a time burbling with misused and perverted intelligence, Steve Martin is a welcome apostle of pure idiocy. Not the corroded comforts of neuroticism (Woody Allen), not the subversive logic of madness and bad taste (Mel Brooks), but blessed idiocy is Martin's thing, and in director Carl Reiner he's found the perfect collaborator in creative cretinism. Well, not perfect, because as talented as Reiner is, the Martin movies he's directed and cowritten ("The Jerk" and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid") are a bit scrappy; they don't have the total personality of the Allen and Brooks movies. Still, with Reiner, Martin has created an endearing hero of our time, the Jerk, an updated version of the classic Fool. And in "The Man With Two Brains" they have produced more laughs per quartz-vibration than in any of their previous works.

In these flicks Martin has become a kind of thinking...