The West Coast Woody Allen

"There is a battle of worldviews at each comic turn here: one genteel, prudish, naive and the other as free and uncensored as the Me Decade allowed. Where you expect a lurid gesture, you get preschool finger goggles. Where Martin sets up a wholesome defense of monogamy, he pivots suddenly toward rude sexual insouciance. This isn't just the comedy of foiled expectations. It's the humor of a value system fleeing toward another era and then back again. Just as the white suit itself was a vexed symbol (did it represent profound conservatism or, a la John Lennon, the opposite?), Martin's buttoned-up-but-libertine, childlike-but-arrantly-adult routine was culturally equivocal. One moment, he seemed to be trying to force the '60s back into their box. A second later, he was sucking on his balloons to get high."

Nathan Heller in Slate assesses Steve Martin.