Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
dir. Scott J. Gill
Maelstrom Entertainment

Porn star Ron Jeremy is known as "The Hedgehog" to his fans. He's short, fat, covered in hair and not known for his personal hygene. But before you start to feel sorry for him, remember: He's had sexual relations with more women than there are people in Mt. Horeb, Wis.

As the reigning "everyman" of hardcore porn with a 21-year career, it was only a matter of time before he was made the object of a mainstream biopic. Jeremy, who is renowned for making ugly male fans say "If this guy can have sex, so can I!" makes a surprisingly sympathetic subject for a film. His slouchy, self-effacing schlubbiness runs counter to everything you'd expect a porn star to be, and his genuine neediness makes his aspirations toward mainstream acting success heartrending. The guy isn't going to make it as a Hollywood regular; you just know it. But it's difficult not to root for him. He's trying, and hard.

Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy is as well-endowed with comic timing and material as its namesake is with … personality. Making deft use of campy porn clips from the '70s and '80s, stupid quotes from fawning fans and a hilariously cranky guest appearance by Al "Grampa Munster" Lewis, Porn Star clocks in with close to laugh-a-minute hilarity. Its pitch-perfect use of stock footage and sexually loaded quotes takes material already rife with fun and squeezes the most out of it. Whoever thought of following around a flustered, semi-flaccid Ron Jeremy with a camera as he tried to get ready for an upcoming scene deserves some sort of Oscar nomination, albeit one that hasn't yet been greenlighted by the Academy.

But considering that Porn Star is a documentary focused on the very volatile and often tragic world of hardcore pornography, the film packs a surprisingly soft edge. Are the actresses exploited? Oh, heck no; why, men are sex objects in exactly the same way, except they're paid less. Do porn stars abuse drugs and alchohol? Sure, but not Ron! So why dwell on it? Is the business filthy and degrading? A little bit, maybe — but it's also uproariously fun!

It's easy to suspect that the business is not everything the movie suggests it's cracked up to be. But because Jeremy is such a nice guy, the film's focus on him results in, basically, a whitewash of the corruption and moral degradation of the industry. You might suspect there to be more sordid and heartwrenching consequences of pornography, but you won't see them here, and that diminishes the film's own artistic impact.

To its credit, the film goes a little bit out of its way to portray the fear of STDs (principally AIDS) that stalks the industry, following Jeremy through a routine monthly testing. But for every minute the film spends on the sordid side of the industry, it spends 20 looking at its glitz and humor: bad acting, gorgeous women, throngs of wacky fans and reasonably big paychecks after a career at the top of the business.

In short: Don't expect Porn Star to reveal much of the porn industry's truly nasty side, or its financial wheels and cogs. And while you're laughing uncontrollably at the film's raunchy camp, don't expect to see much more of its star than what his publicist wants you to: A nice, hard-working Jewish boy who just happens to sometimes have sex with 14 women at once.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)