Everyone Says I Love You
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Movie Reviews of Everyone Says I Love You
Movie Review: WOW!
Summary: 5 Stars
Awesome baby! I prefer this movie over "Sweet and Lowdown" Any day!Movie Review: BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME
Summary: 5 Stars
Great cast, funny as hell, wonderful music, and WOODY ALLEMovie Review: i cannot speak english...
Summary: 5 Stars
but it is very funny! i love itMovie Review: One Man's (Extended) Family
Summary: 4 Stars
By now, Woody Allen fans have learned to take the long view in evaluating his, uh, oeuvre. Those of us who remember such early efforts as BANANAS or TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN--which we loved but no one was about to try and pass off as great cinema--also remember when almost out of the blue, Allen became a filmmaker to be reckoned with. LOVE AND DEATH was sharp, literate and suggested that could put together a well crafted film. But ANNIE HALL caused genuine excitement, garnered deserved critical acclaim and (although Allen purportedly could not have cared less) Academy Award nominations. It seemed, at the time, a quantum leap in terms of sophistication. It also hinted at artistic problems that would start to surface in later films.One of the key differences between ANNIE and the earlier comedies was the lightly self-referential touch. If Allen had always played a nebbishy everyman in his early comedies: he now played--truer to his actual life experience certainly--a nebbishy successful filmmaker and comedian. The change was crucial. He was no longer a little man. Alvy Singer may have been a neurotic mess, but, like Woody Allen, he was a real player.
By the time we get to EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU some 20 years later, Allen's milieu is clearly defined--and extended. The single and childless Alvy and Annie have been replaced by the multi-married, no longer together Joe and Steffi (Goldie Hawn) and their array of children from their various marriages, blended, by all appearances, more or less successfully. Like so many of Allen's later films, it takes place in a glowing, warm upper middle class Manhattan (when we're not off to Paris or Venice). It's a world most of us can only dream of (as was true of the young and struggling Woody Allen once).
If EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU's setting is a kind of fantasyland, its characters are probably equally fantastic. Sophisticated, sweetly neurotic, but hardly desperate, these are people who remain best friends with former spouses, with no lingering "issues" rearing their heads at odd moments. College aged children play cupid for their own parents, and go, with a nod and a wicked wink, way beyond innocent PARENT TRAP territory. But nothing is done maliciously. Intentions are sort of good even when they involve such unethical behavior as eavesdropping on a private therapy session.
As warm and engaging as the characters are, and as attractive as their world seems, placing it all in the context of an old-style "burst into song" kind of musical belies all that. If the similar milieu of HANNAH AND HER SISTERS seemed like a possibility (a real world that we're just not fortunate enough to inhabit), this film's setting is pure fantasy. It is tempting to say that in his post-Mia period, Allen is projecting a vision of the kind of social world where forgiveness and reconciliation are not only possible, but are a virtual given.
It's probably not wise to rely on a psycho-analytic approach to Woody Allen's films. It's hard to ignore the fact though that both in real life and in his films, Allen went from dyed-in-the-wool bachelorhood to having an extended, perhaps eccentric family situation. It cannot be surprising that themes of family and forgiveness should appear in his later films. What's fascinating here is that these themes are addressed in a normally light-entertainment mode (musical comedy). It makes the yearning for innocence all the more profound in a way.
The music is pretty good too. Yes, the untrained voices of the actors work only in the context of the movie and no one's going to rush out looking for the soundtrack, but in that context, the device does work fairly well. Call it a little "alienation effect" or an "Allen-ation" effect. I find the songs effective for the most part, and certainly no more disturbing than some of the more traditional bits of surrealism in Woody Allen films (e.g. Marshall McLuhan jumping out from behind a movie display board in ANNIE HALL to lecture some pretentious buffoon about the real significance of his work). ANNIE was a great film, EVERYONE SAYS isn't quite on that level. But in the overall context of his work, it's certainly merits our attention--and our affection.
Movie Review: Woody Allen does a Musical. Great Jokes, Poor Singing
Summary: 4 Stars
`Everyone Says I Love You', written and directed by Woody Allen should have been entitled `Fickle, thy name is Woman', as it seem to be about one romantic change of mind after another by the leading female characters in the story.
Woody has parodied virtually every other genre of movie and play, so it was only a matter of time until he got to doing a parody of a musical. Thankfully, the Woodman did not try to write his own original songs for the story. Instead, as he almost always does, he borrowed songs from other Broadway and Hollywood musicals, mostly, I believe, from the Twenties and Thirties. I could have sworn that most of them were written by Cole Porter, but only one was. There was also one song from Rodgers and Hart, but anonymous songwriters from what was once known as Tin Pan Alley composed most others.
What was less fortunate was that all cast members, including the multi-talented Mr. Allen did all their own singing. And, with the possible exception of Drew Barrymore, not one of them seemed to be able to effectively carry a tune. It wasn't that they were off key so much as all their voices were incredibly thin. One expected them to crack under the strain on every line. There are a few numbers done by a standard Broadway type chorus that both work and are immensely funny.
As usual, Allen has his cast of thousands, headed by the likes of Julia Roberts, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Edward Norton and Natalie Portman (in a very young, pre-Star Wars role). Particularly clever was the casting of Tim Roth as an ex-con, playing a role stolen whole from a Quentin Tarantino script.
The story has a sense of being a first draft of `The Royal Tennenbaums', although I confess it is not as good as this dark comedy.
Oddly, very few of Allen's usual subjects and themes make it into this movie. It seems as if he was committed to making the film as lighthearted as possible and he certainly succeeds in that. The danger is that unlike some of his other seriocomic family dramas such as `Crimes and Misdemeanors' and `Hannah and Her Sisters', this movie threatens to float away for lack of substance.
What is going for it mostly are the performances of actors who seem to really be enjoying themselves and the lovely scenery in Manhattan, Paris, and Venice, lovingly photographed by Carlo DiPalma.
This is a movie primarily for Woody Allen fans and Goldie Hawn fans. Fans of musicals will probably be disappointed. The best thing about it is that it succeeds in being funny.