hyped garbage

Beautiful, moving film.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Three man-woman couples vacation for the weekend at a summer house in upstate New York in the early years of the 20th century. Writer-director-star Woody Allen doesn't merely tread his own familiar territory, he treads other filmmakers' as well. Aligning himself with the masters (Shakespeare, Bergman and Renoir), Allen confuses the austere and cerebral with farce. While even recycled Allen witticisms (and characters!) still manage to be funny most of the time, his themes here--choices and regret, love and sex and the afterlife--prove to be a heavy load for a summer fling in the country to carry. Only when Woody falls back on his very modern talk (predictably a barrage of sexual frustrations) does he hit his stride as a writer, and yet the ensemble cast here doesn't quite click. Cinematographer Gordon Willis lights the outdoor scenes with a magical glow, but none of these lustful but doubtful neurotics are very appealing. ** from ****

Cute and charming, if not really much more. Gordon Willis's photography is nowhere near as amazing as his earlier collaborations with Woody, and the film doesn't have any wildly funny moments. But the writing is witty, and the acting solid if not triumphant. It just doesn't feel like a Woody Allen film somehow. More like a nice, solid, unassuming French farce. That's not a bad thing, and this film is still better than 99% of what comes out of Hollywood, with a sweeter, more upbeat tone than usual for Allen. It's just coming on the heels of masterpieces like 'Annie Hall', 'Manhattan', and 'Stardust Memories', and just before other great films like 'Zelig' and 'Purple Rose of Cairo', it can't help but pale a bit in comparison.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)As long as you don't mind making light of deception, adultery, and plain old cheating on your wife and lover, this is a really well constructed, fast, brilliantly written film.Woody Allen, by nature, has some combination of striving for depths and avoiding them by silliness that is beguiling. It's really fun to see one of his "entertainments" like this (as opposed to his all out comedies or his more serious films) because it carves out an ingenious, lovable world where you don't have to worry about a thing for an hour and a half. There is surprising humor (of course), sight gags and turns of phrase, and the absurdity of situation. But there is also a layer of despair at the universe, too, which is like pepper in the sugar.Now Allen is a director as much as a writer (both, never forget) and he makes movies fluid, visually tight, and fresh in spirit. And he does this in part because he gets great actors and he gets them to perform at their best. That's part of what a great director does, inspiring and making the most of everyone. Here we have Mia Farrow, who is her usual meek intelligent self, and a counterpart, an echo really, played to perfect pitch by Mary Steenburgen. But even more astonishing really is the arrogant, prolix professor played by Jose Ferrar, who never cracks from his erudite Victorianism. And there is Allen himself, playing the same kind of neurotic, feeling, questioning man he is so good at.So there is nothing her not to like. Toss in the parallels to Shakespeare, an homage to Bergman, and the use of Mendelssohn for music (a switch for Allen), and you have a movie that would stand up to studying. Not that it needs study. It's too slight and frivolous to worry much about, and it gets downright ridiculous (or puerile) at times, so don't worry beyond having fun. For some, it might be too affected, and it might have too many lines that seem obvious, or are played with a kind of falseness when genuine intensity might be welcome. But not really. It's a set piece, a play held flat by celluloid, an overly controlled contrivance, a highly successful resolution of intention. When it's done, you won't be changed, you won't cry, but you'll feel good, and will have a good laugh or two to remember.Years later:I have to admit this movie just clicks with me, and every time I watch it I'm aware it's a completely frivolous, minor effort. But I really like it anyway, and I think it has some sparkling lines, really funny comic comeback and expressions. The movie is also one of the famous set of nearly flawless films shot for Allen by the great cinematographer Gordon Willis.The premise here is simple—three mismatched couples get together for a weekend in the country. (Note here—Allen famously hates the country, and this feels like upstate New York in spirit.) We not only see the quirks in the relationships that exist, we see the attempts at new matches in a kind of grab bag of infidelity. That part of the movie is silly and fun.The other theme here is sort of serious, though in comic clothes. And that's whether there is life after death, or a world of spirits in any way. The answer is Allen's wishful one: yes. But he can only approach it in this kind of fantasy, because in the real world he believes otherwise (from what I read). So this is just a postscript after yet another fun viewing. Short and funny.

Woody Allen can surprise every once in a while, and Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy was a slight surprise. If I had heard more praise for it then I would've expected whatever, but it seemed to be one of his more "minor" works, something he wrote and directed very quickly in the midst of working on his big project Zelig. Expecting just a simple trifle, maybe along the lines of a Scoop or Manhattan Murder Mytsery, I got something more substantial. It draws upon sources of Bergman (Smiles of a Summer Night, making it Allen's only homage of Bergman that isn't dark and depressing), Shakespeare (for obvious reasons of the title, but also for the magical element), and maybe just something else that sprang out of Allen that I couldn't really tell.It's a comedy about mis-matched lovers, and how over the course of a day and night old wounds are opened, old flames come up, and lust is purged for better or worse. It's Woody Allen as an inventor with wife Mary Steenburgen inviting a philosophy professor (Jose Ferrer) and his to-be wife (Mia Farrow, first Allen movie and one of her best), who Allen's character Andrew used to date once, er twice, er three times. Then there's Julie Hagerty and Tony Robbins, good friends of the hosting couple, and with Robbins feeling some hardcore affection for Farrow, and the marriage between Allen and Steenburgen being in momentary peril (and Ferrer's "one last hurrah" ideal in Hagerty), it becomes like a twister game of affections and immense sexual stimulus.Whether or not this all makes sense is besides the point. Allen isn't out here so much for logic- how could he with laughable old self-flying machines and that weird magic box that springs out spirits into the night- as he is for personalities and using his effortless ear for dialog. Some of this is really funny, and even clever, like the sly joke with the bathtubs filling up with water (and Robbins/Farrow 'falling asleep', or with the near sex scene on top of the stove in the kitchen. So much of Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy tries to deny the whimsy of the setting, but by the end it becomes undeniable. Rarely has infidelity been this much fun, or with such good performances, in a film by this director, and it should be marked as one of his underrated (or maybe not widely seen) piecfes; for the nature montage early on alone, which is like the forest version of the opening of Manhattan, is worth viewing.