Carl Gottlieb

Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin), a homeless bum, directly addresses the camera and tells his story. Navin is the adopted white son of African American sharecroppers in Mississippi, who grows to adulthood naively unaware of his obvious adoption. The large family lived in a small shack. The family includes mother (Mabel King), father (Richard Ward), brother Taj (Dick Anthony Williams), sister Elvira (Ren Woods), Grandma Johnson (Frances E. Williams) and many more. He stands out in his family not just because of his skin color, but also because of his utter lack of rhythm when his adopted family plays spirited blues music. He is unable to dance in rhythm to the spirited folk songs played by the family, but finds that he can do so perfectly to a champagne-style song on the radio. One night, he hears the staid and starchy Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra song called "Crazy Rhythm" on the radio and his feet spontaneously begin to move with the urge to dance. He sees this as a calling (and believes that this is the kind of music that inspires him to go out into the world and be somebody) and decides to hitchhike to St. Louis, from where the song was broadcast. On the way, he stops at a motel, where a dog wakes him up by barking at his door. Navin thinks the dog is trying to warn of a fire and decides to name the dog "Lifesaver." He wakes up all the other hotel guests to rescue them, but when everyone realizes it was a false alarm, one Asian man angrily suggests he call the dog "Shithead," which Navin takes literally. Navin takes a lift from several motorists and eventually reaches St. Louis. Navin gets a job (and a place to sleep) at a gas station owned by Mr. Harry Hartounian (Jackie Mason). Harry pays Navin $1.10 per hour. Navin makes it a habit of sending his savings back home at regular intervals. Over a period of time Harry starts to trust Navin and even leaves him in charge of the gas station when he goes out on date with his wife. A car full of thieves rolls in to buy some gas. Navin says that they have to pay by credit card as he is all alone and the owner has asked him not to expose the cash at the gas station to customers. Navin realizes that the credit card is stolen. Navin calls the cops but then attaches a thick rope to the axle of the car and the other end to the wall of a nearby church. When the thieves realize that they have been made, they try to drive away, bringing down the church wall. He's thrilled to find that he's listed in the local phone book, as his name is "in print" for the first time. Not long after, a gun-wielding lunatic (M. Emmet Walsh) randomly flips through the phone book and picks "Johnson, Navin R." as his next victim. As the madman watches through his rifle scope, waiting for a clear shot, Navin fixes the slippery glasses of a customer, Stan Fox (Bill Macy), by adding a handle and a nose brake. The customer, Stan Fox, is an inventor who promises to try to market the device to split the profits 50/50 with Navin, then departs. Seizing his chance, the crazed sniper tries to kill Navin, but fails, hitting the oil cans in the station window and a soft-drink machine. The lunatic chases Navin to a traveling carnival, where Navin hides out, eventually getting a job with SJM Fiesta Shows as a weight guesser. While employed there, Navin meets an intimidating daredevil biker named Patty Bernstein (Catlin Adams) and has a sexual relationship with her, finally realizing what his "special purpose" (his euphemism for his penis) is for. Later, while operating a miniature railway, he meets a cosmetologist named Marie Kimble (Bernadette Peters) and arranges a date with her. Patty confronts them, but Marie knocks her out. While courting, Navin and Marie walk along the beach and sing "Tonight You Belong to Me", with Navin playing the ukulele and Marie on the cornet. Navin and Marie fall in love, but Marie reluctantly decides to leave him because of his lack of financial security. She writes a note and slips out while Navin is in the bath. Devastated, Navin takes Shithead and travels to Los Angeles. There, the gunman who tried to kill him-now sane and working as a private investigator-tracks him down and gives him a letter from Stan requesting a meeting. His glasses invention, now called the Opti-Grab, is selling big and he's entitled to half of the profits. Stan gives him a check for $250,000 as the first installment on his share of the profits. Now extremely rich, he finds and marries Marie, and they buy an extravagant mansion. Their life becomes one of splendor and non-stop partying. However, motion-picture director Carl Reiner (playing himself) files a class action lawsuit against Navin, claiming that the invention caused his eyes to be crossed and as a result, the death of a stunt driver in the film he was making. Nearly ten million other people have the same complaint (including the judge and prosecution) and are awarded $10 million in damages. Bankrupt, depressed, and now homeless, he abandons Marie and is soon living on the streets. He storms out into the street after yelling at and blaming Marie. Seeing how callous and superficial they've become, Marie wears her tattered dress from the beach, and regrets requiring Navin to be rich. His story now told, he resigns himself to a life of misery and memories of Marie, but to his amazed joy, she suddenly appears, along with Navin's family, and some more good news: Having carefully invested the small sums of money he sent home throughout the film, they've become wealthy themselves. They pick him up off the street, and he and Marie move back home into the Johnsons' new house - a much larger but identical version of their old, small shack. Once again Navin dances on the porch to folk songs, this time with perfect rhythm.

When signs of a new man-eater begin to wash up on Amity`s beaches, Police Chief Brody must convince the town of the danger and kill the monster.

Orange picker Leroy Jones inadvertently becomes a union leader and is forced out of town, leaving behind his wife Annie Mae and his sexually-obsessed father Rufus. Richard Pryor plays three roles: Leroy Jones, a poor orange-picker who gets laid off for accidentally joining the workers' union during one of their demonstrations; Leroy's father, whom he leaves behind with the rest of his family to go to Los Angeles; and Reverend Lenox Thomas, who impregnates Leroy's wife Annie Mae during his absence. In Los Angeles, Leroy ends up working for the same company that fired him back home; he is a manager at the company, but is now distant from his former pals. Though married, he falls in love with labor organizer Vanetta and must divide his time between her and Annie Mae. When he discovers that Annie Mae is pregnant by Reverend Thomas, he puts the moves on Mrs. Thomas. —mts77

Coy "Cannonball" Buckman is a race driver-turned parolee, who signs on to compete in the Trans-Continental Road Race, a cross-country journey starting at the Santa Monica Pier and ending at a garage in New York City. This does not sit well with Coy's parole officer girlfriend Linda Maxwell, who is legally responsible for him and he could go back to prison for violating his parole. Fixing up Coy's red Pontiac Trans Am is his loyal pal Zippo Friedman, who decides to enter the race himself in a identical Trans Am and even dressing up like Coy to fool the cops. Coy's rival is Cade Redman, an embittered fellow racer, who is also tasked to take no-talent country singer Perman Waters and his mother Sharma Capri to New York to jump-start Perman's stalled career. Other participants in the race is eccentric European racing champ Wolfe Messer, driving a yellow DeTomaso Pantera, Jim and Maryann Crandell, a surfer couple racing in a silver Corvette owned by her father. Terry McMillan, who sheepishly uses sneak tactics to make it to New York without driving his orange Chevorlet Blazer, Beutell Morris, who uses the race as a ruse to help a rich couple deliver their Lincoln Continental to New York without a single scratch, and Sandy, driving a custom blue van with her two waitress friends, Judy and Ginny. What Coy does not know is that his gambler brother Bennie made a deal with mob boss Lester Marks to make sure Coy wins the race as Bennie is in heavy debt to them. Linda has no choice but to accompany Coy in the race, but eventually decides to leave her in Zippo's company, when Redman starts trying to run him off the road. Not long after, the dirty tricks begin to come into play: Bennie, with the help of his prison escapee friend Sharpe, secretly planted a bomb under Messer's Pantera, which explodes during a police pursuit in the desert and Redman shoots out a tire in Coy's Trans Am. He later beats up Sharpe, posing as a motorcycle cop pretending to stop Coy on a routine traffic stop, and confronts Redman at a roadside grocery store, where they wreck the entire establishment. Redman escapes the melee and shatters the headlights on Coy's car before taking off. That night, Coy notices the broken headlights and winds up totaling his car on a winding mountain road, but not after being loaned a green Ford Mustang by a pair of rural auto mechanics, who are big fans of him. Redman gets word that Coy is still in the race and is forced to call in more reinforcements to stop him. They mistake Zippo as Coy and beat him to a pulp, with Linda defeating most of the men with judo and karate moves. Coy shows up and learns from Linda that Zippo was actually driving the car that night when a young girl died, resulting in Coy's prosecution. Coy tells Linda that he took the fall for it because Zippo would have never survived in prison. Linda wants to ride with Coy again, for fear of her safety, but Coy says the race is almost over and they will be together soon. Other sub-plots include Jim's Corvette suffering from a damaged fan belt and after unsuccessful attempts to repair it, they try to steal one from a supermarket parking lot, only to be chased away by a suspicious cop and Sandy and her friends duping a pair of handsome patrolmen by having sex with them to avoid a speeding ticket. At this point, a half-crazed Redman notices Coy driving into the construction site of an unfinished bridge. He dumps Perman and Sharma out of the car and speeds after him. Coy manages to jump the bridge to the other side, but Redman's brakes give out and pummels down to a fiery death. Meanwhile, Sharpe plans to assassinate Coy using a sniper rifle, not knowing it is actually Zippo driving the car. Sharpe shoots Zippo through the head and loses control of the Trans Am, ejecting Linda in the process, and explodes. Beutell, distracted by the explosion, accidentally knocks down the car Sharpe was laying under, fatally crushing him. Jim and Maryann spot Linda lying on the road and to take her to a nearby hospital, but not after unintentionally causing a multi-car pile-up. At the hospital, the doctor tells them she will be okay and Jim thinks they should forget about the race and go home, but Maryann still wants to push forward, even though they might not win first place. Terry and his girlfriend Louisa are the first ones to arrive at the finish line, but are disqualified when she blabs that they left their celebratory champagne on the plane. The second one to arrive is Coy, who is greeted by Bennie, but the victory is cut short when a TV cameraman tells Coy about the pile-up, the other red Trans Am destroyed in the explosion, and that Linda was taken to the hospital. Coy learns the truth about the plan Bennie had all along, rips up his race ticket, and heads for the hospital, as a disappointed Lester and his bodyguard escort a doomed Bennie to Lester's limo, as Jim and Maryann arrive and end up the official winners of the race. At the hospital, Coy rushes to Linda's room and is relieved to see her alive, but badly injured, and the two lovingly embrace, as Beutell eventually delivers the now-wrecked Lincoln to the couple standing outside a downtown hotel.

When a Great White shark begins preying on humans in New England, the police chief, a shark expert and a grizzled fisherman go on a perilous journey to hunt the creature down.