A few of Philip Roth’s books have been adapted to film, but they’ve never really clicked. (Goodbye, Columbus came close.) Bye, Bye Braverman, not based on a Roth book, is the closest to catching the Roth gestalt on film.
What is billed as a comedy is actually drowning in pain. First generation Jewish-American intellectuals, still figuring out why they aren’t lampshades, pile into a Volkswagen and get lost on the way to Brooklyn. It’s a heady mix of subtext and borscht belt.
Frankly, if you aren’t Jewish, or at least very studied up on this particular moment in New York Jewish thought, this movie will sail right by you.
