Portnoy's Complaint (1972) Was there ever a movie more doomed to infamous failure than this one?
The whole idea of it was an act of lunacy.......what studio executive could dream up the possibility of making a palatable, mainstream big studio release out of novelist Philip Roth's most controversial book, .......a no holds barred, freewheeling X-rated monologue drenched in masturbation, masturbatory fantasies and perpetual sex. "
The monumentally thankless task of turning 'Portnoy' into a movie somehow fell to Hollywood's most successful, celebrated and distinguished screenwriter Ernest Lehman... ("North By Northwest", "Sweet Smell Of Success", "The Prize", "The King And I", "The Sound Of Music", "West Side Story", "Family Plot")
And therein lay the birth of the film's instant death-on-arrival.
Lehman, who doubled down on the madness by taking on the direction of the film (his one and only such attempt), was far too restrained, literate and tasteful an artist for such uninhibited, , ribald-to-the-point-of-pornography material......
His script read like he'd approached Roth's novel with rubber gloves on to avoid staining himself and his clumsy, unimaginative. direction of it only made the film even worse than it had to be. Lehman tried maintaining a respectful distance from the book's unbridled excursions into raw sex, bodily fluids and the joys of jerking off. .....and the results were dire - high gloss Hollywood dressed up in fake naughtiness.
The casting seemed spot-on at first glance......but the actors selected here proved to be lazy, tiresome choices....
Richard Benjamin snagged the title role, a leering sex addict who would trace the origins of his neuroses back to his monstrously overbearing Jewish mother. (Lee Grant, braying out a low grade comedy skit caricature...) In previous films, Benjamin had already locked in this exact same performance - a smug deadpan expression and delivery, rarely interrupted by any actual acting.
Playing the barely literate, but sexually voracious fashion model who becomes the sole recipient of Portnoy's rampant lust was the soon to be ubiquitous Karen Black. And there'd be no escaping her throughout the 70's, since she'd go on to star in virtually every other major movie released that decade. Black faced little competition from Benjamin's laid-back stand-up comedian style of acting, so she easily seized full control of the movie, for what little it's worth.
But after Benjamin ditches Black (presumably for being too needy and stupid), he meets humiliating sexual defeat at the hands of his next would-be conquest....enacted by another rising 70's star. Jill Clayburgh, enjoying her bit of screen time as a fierce Israeli Sabra whom Benjamin foolishly tries to rape.
Not unexpectedly, the film was greeted with equal amounts of derision and outrage. Censor board prudes sputtered in disgust, but anyone with even a passing knowledge of Roth's novel recognized it as a pathetic, watered-down, ham handed adaptation, destined to please no one.
Strictly a curiosity item for avid cinema buffs who want to see it once before they die......once is more than enough. Maybe too much. 1 star (*).....(and that star is only for composer Michel Legrand's ridiculous inappropriate romantic score, an unintentionally funny addition that led me to wonder if Legrand ever really laid eyes on the movie at all while he wrote the music......).
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