Portnoy's Complaint movie review (1972)
To be sure, Roth's subject and approach was in bad taste -- but in magnificently bad taste. It was something like two of my favorite comedies, "The Producers" (1968) and "Where's Poppa?", which had the courage to face their subjects forthrightly and go for belly-laughs instead of embarrassed snickers. When you try to handle bad taste in good taste, you almost always wind up with something truly obscene.
That is apparently what the little old ladies on the Chicago Police Censor Board have decided, since they ignored the R rating and made "Portnoy" adults-only in Chicago. This was no doubt to protect those under 18 from exposure to a subject about which, of course, they have no knowledge.
In any event, the movie version of "Portnoy's Complaint" is a true fiasco. It has been written, produced and directed by Ernest Lehman as a sort of expedition with gun and camera into the untamed jungle of Alexander Portnoy's fantasies. But it's hard to show fantasies in a movie. Movies are terribly literal and can't get away with flights of fancy the way novels can. Maybe that's why the best moments in the movie come when Lehman simply has his hero repeat Roth's dialog from the book, verbatim. This is the way he handles the celebrated encounter with the Portnoy family's liver dinner, and I suppose we should all be relieved that we didn't have to watch them sit down to that particular meal.
The casting of Richard Benjamin as Portnoy is not inspired, but I suppose it was inevitable. He has played the sexually inept, introverted Jewish schlemiel in so many movies ("Goodbye, Columbus," "Diary of a Mad Housewife," "The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker") that if he hasn't lost his mind or gotten any warts by now he can stop worrying. Karen Black is very good as the Monkey, the shikse object of Portnoy's dreams. But Lee Grant simply doesn't do as Portnoy's mother. She is too slender, too organized, not driven enough. I dunno; I keep visualizing Shelly Winters as Mrs. Portnoy.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46ppqusnqTGtHnCqKSppJGeu7V5kHJuaw%3D%3D