Portnoys Beschwerden

Constipation and diarrhea is presented as a running theme in this movie which serves to define this movie in it's entirety. Something to pass on as flushable down the toilet. What we get subjected to are the trials and tribulations of its male star attraction who heroically goes through life tasked with gratifying his sexual lust. Which for him is a daily routine as necessary for life as three meals a day. Amazing it is that the people who put this production together were able to assemble reputable actors willing to become cast members in this fiasco. Do yourself a favor and pass this one up.

Richard Benjamin, Karen Black, Lee Grant, Jill Clayburgh, what were you thinking?

Overall not a terrible movie--but it drags on more than one occasion and the NY jewish schtick is cliched and overdone. Very dated and too much like a sit-com at times, but worth it to see a scorching hot Karen Black and neurotic Richard Benjamin at his peak.

Philip Roth's celebrated bestseller, a frank and overtly-rude novel of modern-day Jewish guilt and rage, comes to the screen somewhat neutered. Richard Benjamin plays the 33-year-old lawyer looking back on his boyhood in New Jersey, set in a stifling family house of Jewish repression, and later on his tumultuous affair with a shiksa fashion model. The themes of the book--the all-important mother figure (whose judge-and-jury persona shapes Portnoy's sex life) and the wanton craving for constant ejaculation--are touched upon here fleetingly; but Ernest Lehman, who adapted the script and directed, is too tasteful for raunch. He seems to have decided that simply satirizing Jewish conventions (in a familiar, cartoony way) would suffice instead. And so we get the standard arguments around the kitchen table, the squabbling about kosher diets, the meddling and prodding over sexual matters, and the inevitable battle between Jewish girls versus shiksas. This is all familiar territory by now, made even worse with the casting of Benjamin (didn't we cover much of this material with Benjamin in "Goodbye, Columbus"?). Karen Black gives the film's strongest performance as Portnoy's first serious girlfriend--she's flirty, sexy and scary all at once--but there's perhaps too much of her. The entire midsection of the movie is devoted to Portnoy's putting up with her moods, and Black's "Monkey" is haphazardly written (she's a child-like waif who can't spell in one scene, and a bilingual, bisexual woman of the world in the next!). However, Black's serious stab at this screenplay is commendable, and she gets some good speeches when she isn't being derogatory (the script being an equal-opportunity insulter). Lee Grant tries, too, to make something of the thinly-conceived role of Mother Portnoy, though Jack Somack as her husband is much better suited to the scenario and upstages her. Jill Clayburgh turns up in a throwaway role (she fights against being humiliated, but doesn't appear to teach Portnoy anything in the process). With all this talent on-board, one might be inclined to give the picture a break (it was savaged by the critics in 1972); alas, it is a film that doesn't come close to accomplishing what it sets out to be: a comedic film about sexual frustration, release and resolve. There are too many outré attempts at jokes without understanding the true root of the humor. ** from ****

Even the esteemed screenwriter Ernest Lehman could not write a script and direct a film of "Portnoy's Complaint." Philip Roth's internalized monologue of a book defies such a transition. After more than half a century, Roth's novel still sparkles, while this film was dead on arrival in 1972 and remains best forgotten.

I usually dislike movies based on famous novels. This one is funny, bold and deep, yet the critics think it's trash. My criticism of the movie is that it didn't go far enough. Richard Benjamin is terribly miscast. He is far too handsome, patrician and cool. He belongs in a country club, hunting foxes. They should have picked a homelier, less serene type. The action should have been less restrained and "tasteful". They should have laid it on thick, used more camp. At times the film looked like a Ross Hunter production!!! It was too nice and smooth. But despite these major insufficiencies, it is one of the better films ever made. I must read the novel. But how can I do that, given my vow never to read fiction again?