20151230: Comedy Review--Everything You Always Wanted to Know

Name: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (1972)
IMDb: link to IMDb      

Genres: Comedy    Country of Origin: USA.

Cast: Woody Allen appears in most of the vignettes.  link to Wikipedia
  a. 'Do Aphrodisiacs Work?' with Lynn Redgrave.
  b. 'What Is Sodomy?' with Gene Wilder.
  c. 'Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching Orgasm?' with Louise Lasser.
  d. 'Are Transvestites Homosexuals?' with Lou Jacobi.
  e. 'What Are Sex Perverts?' with Regis Philbin, Robert Q. Lewis, and Pamela Mason.
  f. 'Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?' with John Huston and Heather MacRae.
  g. 'What Happens During Ejaculation?' with Burt Reynolds, Tony Randall, Erin Fleming, Robert Walden.

Directed by: Woody Allen.  Written by:  Woody Allen (screenplay), David Reuben (book).

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: The film is an anthology. Each story is about an aspect (or several) of sexual behaviour.
  a. Chastity belts and aphrodisiac potions in medieval times in England.
  b. Gene Wilder as a respected physician who falls in lust with a patient's sheep.
  c. Italian-speaking Woody Allen trying to be as macho as possible, but cannot initially find the key to his wife's satisfaction.
  d. A middle class man experiments with women's clothes.
  e. A game show, filmed in grainy black and white, has panelists attempting to guess the perversion of the guest.
  f. John Huston as the mad scientist rejected by Masters and Johnson.  He's out to prove his strange theories.  As a side effect (second part of the vignette), a giant mobile breast is created that terrorises the countryside.  Allen and MacRae play a scientist and a journalist covering the action.
  g. Tony Randall quarterbacks the male brain's attempt to manage bodily resources during a hot romantic date.

Delineation of conflicts:  In each case, some aspect of sexual behaviour is explored.  The vignettes are self-contained.  The common thread, though, is that some private behaviour can become public, with consequences varying from embarrassment to jail to death.

Resolution: The surfacing of private sexual behaviour is done for comic effect.

One line summary: One of Woody's more raucous efforts.

Statistics:
  a. Cinematography: 4/10 Gag me with a spoon.

  b. Sound: 6/10 OK, but not all that interesting.

  c. Acting: 6/10 This was quite variable.  I liked the performances of Louise Lasser, Gene Wilder (despite the subject), Tony Randall, and Burt Reynolds.  I thought Woody Allen was at his best in (c), which was a lot of fun.

  d. Screenplay: 7/10 This was from the funny era of Woody Allen films, and I got quite a few good laughs out of this one.  However, the 7 vignettes were not equally funny.  Some were more boring than anything else, such as (d).  The segments (a), (b), (c), and (g) were humorous, but (e) and (f), not so much.

Final rating: 6/10 I was looking for funny, and I found it.  Well, most of the time.  Also, in 43 years the film has not aged all that well.  What was funny about sex in 1972 is not all quite as funny in 2015.