EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This is an almost ghastly misfire
from Woody Allen combining his least interesting
plot ever, paper-thin characters and badly executed
musical numbers. Besides a couple of moments of
cleverness, this film turns a bad Woody Allen
comedy into a bad Woody Allen musical comedy. I
found this was the hardest film I had to sit
through this year. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4).
New York Critics: 13 positive, 5 negative, 8 mixed
It may be partially my fault. The night before I saw my first new musical film in years I prepared myself by watching my favorite musical, Norman Jewison's FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. This would allow me to compare techniques, I told myself. Oh dear. Not only is EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU not FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, it is not much of anything. It is, in fact, a bigger disappointment than MIGHTY APHRODITE. That film, his last but for this, made fun of the conventions of the Greek Chorus in a play and this one makes fun of the traditions of the musical. Take two TV situation comedy plots, sprinkle in some fairly incompetently done musical numbers and what do you get? What I got was the obvious conclusion that Woody Allen has lost the recipe and no longer makes decent films. Can it really be true that the director who made films like LOVE AND DEATH and CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS or even BULLETS OVER BROADWAY made a film that misfires in eight directions the way this one does? Woody Allen in the past has created characters, humorous but very real at the same time, that the viewer cared about. That seems unimportant to him now. The people in EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU are paper-thin. They seem to be no more than just pieces to move around a game board of uninteresting romantic situations. Allen is seemingly so desperate for a laugh he is even stealing gags from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW--in this case a male dancer in a wheelchair kicking his leg like a Radio City Rockette. The old Woody Allen was a font of comedic ideas and would never have needed to borrow a gag from another writer.
Steffi (played by Goldie Hawn), her previous husband Joe (Woody Allen), and her current husband Bob (Alan Alda) get along very well with each other. Steffi and Bob are sort of wealthy hippy-dippy liberals and activists for contemporary liberal causes. They all look forward to the impending marriage of Steffi's and Bob's ditzy daughter Skylar to the bland and slightly dense Holden (Edward Norton). Little do they realize that one of Steffi's causes will cause problems in their relationship. A second plot has Joe, unlucky in love, courting Von (Julia Roberts) making unfair use of information his daughter gleans from eavesdropping on Von's visits to her analyst. Allen can probably now play the luckless schmoe role in his sleep and does it what would be perfectly but for the fact that much of the audience is losing interest. There are a few faint laughs from having the super- liberal Bob have a neo-conservative son Scott (Lucas Haas), but Scott's political arguments with his father are only on the most shallow and cliched level. Allen is telling stories he can write in his sleep and writing himself roles for which he can phone in performances.
Whether it is an attempt at satire of the musical form, or whether it is just incompetence, one grows rather weary of hearing people sing who really should not be singing in public. At first it seems like it is just Edward Norton who lacked the talent, but as the film wears on there are more major characters singing when it would have been better to remain silent. Allen gets some humor from having very realistic looking people in the background suddenly joining the production number. But after a while having people singing badly, including major characters, goes a little stale. Some have found one of the musical routines, taking place in a hospital, to have some on-target humor. It did not do much for me, but a second musical number at a mortuary was for me the (not-too-high) high-point of EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU. Allen has some fun with the ridiculous things some dancers do in musical numbers in the old Busby Berkeley musicals, but the fun rarely rises above the whimsical.
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU was a noble experiment on Woody Allen's part to try to experiment in the medium of the musical and perhaps milk some humor laughing at the conventions of the musical. In theory it might have worked, but even a musical needs a better story than the one(s) Allen wrote. I rate EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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