What a waste of my time!!!
... View MoreSERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
... View Moreeverything you have heard about this movie is true.
... View MoreActress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
... View MoreThe movie about sex, showing no more nudity than one fake boob. This multi-sketch movie is a bit uneven for its own good, but on the other hand, the top is wonderful! I know that I have seen that one long ago, but if I saw the whole movie then I have forgotten the rest, and I can see why.Some reviewers have noted signs of Monty Python inspiration, I would widen the scope to British humor of the 70's. Let's return to that later.I will rate all the sketches with one to five stars.*** Jester sketch, "Do aphrodisiacs work?". Somewhat funny, but not enormously so. Kind of elegant ending though, and you might like Allen's bumbling jester trying to be funny. I suspect this is first because it was felt to be one of the best. ** Sheep sketch, "What is sodomy". The beginning, with a doctor (Gene Wilder) getting an odd visitor, is hilarious, with Wilder's confused expression and long pause when trying to grasp what he heard, and then struggling to stop the herd from bringing the sheep inside... but that's it. The rest of the sketch is plain unfunny. It should have stopped right at the moment when we see that the doctor falls for the sheep too. Period. Then it might have worked. ** Italian sketch "trouble reaching an orgasm" has the Italian as an odd spicing. Mildly amusing, when the husband (Allen) realizes what turns her on, but only mildly. * The transvestite sketch. It starts in a totally different direction, with a man irritated on friends showing off, and then switches to him dressing as a woman, jumping out the window to avoid getting caught in the act... and I just fast-forward, finding absolutely nothing to laugh about. ** What's my perversion, "what are sex perverts?", is another case like the sheep, a funny idea taken too far. As a parody of the famous "What's my line" this is really funny, but only for a short sketch. This runs tedious long before it is over. *** The mad scientist sketch (about sex research), although a slow starter, does make more points than most of the others, some crude but still there are some more memorable. The Frankenstein's Monster references are very strong but only marginally funny, and so are the doctor's experiments. I must say that there are some funny "research topics". On the negative, I must mention the big script flaw, where all the other people in the lab are forgotten after the disaster. What happens next is of course remarkable, we get something that really feels like an idea from the British Cambridge gang (remember Kitten Kong?), the ravaging giant breast that can only be captured with a giant bra! It is a totally bizarre idea, and funny in that sense. Also, the special effect budget was not tight here, the scene with the approaching giant tit and Allen luring it into capture is truly impressive (except that we never see the bra closing completely, I guess that was too hard)! But I still thinks I can rank it a bit above the rest. ***** Inside body scene, "What happens...": This is the absolute top of the entire movie, by far! The whole idea of viewing the body from the inside is not new, but can be very funny, and here it certainly is! Sperms as paratroopers (including Allen), and Burt Reynolds as brain cell, the brain as a command center, various body functions as departments... Lovely!All in all, I think Allen would have needed some more people writing, tightening up the gags a bit, raising the tempo in many of the sketches. There are fun moments, but they are often too far apart. One great sketch, two fairly funny and the rest pretty forgettable sketches is not enough for a great movie, but it doesn't make it an awful one either.
... View MoreADAPTATIONS OF ANY literary work is usually a complex transition from the print medium to that of the screen. By necessity, moving an established work from one medium to another will, by necessity, inevitably leave many details out. Even worse, rewriting for purpose of adaptation often leads to the horrors of R-E-V-I-S-I-O-N!! WITH THE COMING of this Woody Allen film, only the title remains. Topics that were subject of chapters of American Physician, Dr. David Reuben, were transformed into a series of episodic vignettes patterned on and titled by the particular chapter subject matter. This format's visual realization results in what could best be described as series of disparate comedy shorts that only are bound together by their subject matter (S-E-X!!) and the film's writer/director/performer, Woody Allen.BEING ONE OF Mr. Allen's true fans of his earlier work, we rank this very high on the list of his movies. It may have even come at the period of time when he was at his cinematic best. It was then that he gave us titles such as: THDE SLEEPER, BSANANAS, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN and LOVE AND DEATH. OUR FAVOURITE SEGMENTS are those which featured Gene Wilder, John Caradine and Woody (himself) as a para-trooping sperm cell.
... View MoreIn the late 1960s one Dr David Reuben released a book entitled EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX *BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK. Woody Allen's 1972 "movie adaptation" uses the questions of Dr Reuben's question-and-answer format as the titles for 7 comedic sketches all on sexual themes. This was Allen's third conventional film, and his growing importance in Hollywood is evident from the film's all-star cast.The opening "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?", set in medieval times, has Woody Allen as a court jester who seeks to seduce the queen. Most of the humour here consists of anachronism: the jester's jokes are too bad for even a borscht belt comedian, and the dialogue consists of Elizabethian stylings mixed with sexual terminology and crude slang from the present.The following sketch, "What is Sodomy?", is for many viewers the very best. A New York City general practitioner (Gene Wilder) is visited by an Armenian shepherd who begs the doctor to restore the magic to his relationship with a cherished sheep. What ensues, with the doctor descending ever deeper into madness, is made hilarious by Wilder's committed performance and the dialogue is immensely quotable. Another high point of the film is "Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching an Orgasm?". Shot in black and white and with an Italian dialogue, the segment is Allen's homage to the cool ambiance of Antonioni and Fellini. Allen plays a suave, sunglasses-wearing film director who cannot manage to satisfy his wife, played by Louise Lasser, until they begin having risky sex in public places. The fun comes not only in the challenges the man must face in making his wife happy, but also in Allen's ridiculous accent while speaking Italian.In "Are Transvestites Homosexuals?", Lou Jacobi plays a man who sneaks upstairs while at a dinner party in order to wear his hostess' clothes, and subsequently gets himself deeper and deeper in trouble. It's humorous enough, but one wonders if this segment were stronger when the film was first released. Judging from its high frequency in big Hollywood films of the 1960s and early 1970s, cross-dressing must have once been a much funnier concept in that era. The following "What Are Sex Perverts?" is a parody of the game show What's My Line? where a panel of minor celebrities try to guess the perversion of a contestant, who wins $5 for every wrong guess. This is quite funny, but far too brief, as the concept could have been stretched out a bit more."Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?" is a Frankenstein parody where Allen and Heather MacRae play recently acquainted sex researchers who meet a great sexologist (John Carradine), only to discover that he's a diabolical madman. The first half of this segment is pretty funny, as Allen and MacRae make their way through the doctor's castle of horrors. But the second half, when the pair seeks to defeat a giant breast ravaging the countryside, is some of the lamest humour I've seen in some time.The characters of the last segment, "What Happens During Ejaculation?", are personifications of the organs as a man goes on a date with a woman. The brain is depicted as a NASA mission control, with Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds struggling to coordinate bodily functions. They call down to the stomach (men carting off a newly-arrived load of fettucini), and the genitals (blue-collar joes working an enormous pump), as well as other places. Much here will make you chuckle, such as the captured "saboteur" of the man's sexual ambitions, his conscience, depicted as a priest in a Roman collar, and Allen's performance as a sperm cell terrified of making the leap into the unknown. All in all, however, I find this quite dated as well.While my overall impressions is that EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX is quite dated, it's funny enough, and the portions with Allen as an Italian lover and Wilder as a befuddled doctor make it worth seeing at least once.
... View MoreDavid Reuben's book was a pop phenomenon, delving into things (in the mainstream) that were taboo for many people. He made it acceptable to carry this book around. Along comes Woody Allen, who take a series of vignettes (that really had nothing to do with the book) and puts it all out there. Fetishism, masturbation, you name it. He puts his putzy character into every role possible and draws in some great character actors as well. We have Gene Wilder who loves sheep, on the street drinking from a bottle of Woolite. Everything that goes on is pushed to its ridiculous limit. One of my favorites is Allen as a sperm paratrooper with all his fellow sperm, sitting in a bench on a plane (ala World War II) waiting to jump into an unknown kind of D-Day. Also, there is a giant breast which parrots the earlier monster/horror movies, chasing Allen and squirting at him. Like his other earlier offerings it's anything-goes humor and if it doesn't stick, something else will come along. This isn't one of my favorites but there's enough to keep it going.
... View More