There was a vogue around this time to film unfilmable novels - this, Portnoy's Complaint, Take a Nice Girl Like You, etc. Maybe this was filmable - it doesn't work here. It's by John Updike who I've never read, sorry John, but I'm prepared to accept is great. I think the novel's treatment of sex was especially appealing in the Eisenhower era. Maybe not so much in 1970. Maybe also not so much under the direction of Jack Smight.
James Caan would seem to be ideal in the lead - who is a former high school basketball star struggling with life as a grown up. And he's not bad. But maybe they needed to cast someone who played the subtext more - nervy, insecure, someone like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (I guess I'm saying "cast Jewish"... but if not Jewish then more insecure.)
In the "plot" Caan is married to pregnant shrewish Carrie Snodgrass,deals with his old coach Jack Albertson, hooks up with young Anjanette Comer (like the night after leaving his wife). He goes back to the wife when she has the baby, the wife accidentally kills the baby (an unconvincing doll but a stressful sequence - they killed a kid in Caan's Cinderella Liberty too.
Look, the film has a go. Doesn't get there. I think it was beyond Jack Smight, director, and the adapter. Struggles from not being set in period. Gives Comer a chance. I can see why Caan was attracted to it.
But a film like this everything needs to wor, and that's not the case here.
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