Review of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) by Ken S — 02 Sep 2013

An adaptation in name only, this is Woody Allen's collection of seven vignettes concerning various aspects of human sexuality.

It's all very silly, and absurd, and some of it is quite dated, but overall, this is a lesser Allen work, but still rather amusing at times.

Sometimes the humor feels more like Mel Brooks than Allen, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Several of the shorts seem to be a genre or style parody, and that was fine with me. For example, a segment on aphrodisiacs is done as a medieval/Shakespeare farce. There's a segment that is a take on Italian art films, a game show spoof, and, the two funniest and best bits are a monster movie riff, and a NASA/mission control satire respectively.

In the monster movie one, we get a giant breast on the loose (parody of the blob), and in the mission control short, it concerns a man's internal organs functioning as a mission control command center relaying various messages to parts of the body in preparation for sex. This segment features Burt Reynolds of all people as a switchboard operator, and Allen as a sperm having second thoughts about his mission, which is portrayed as a group of paratroopers preparing to jump. That is ridiculously wacky and absurd, but absolutely hilarious. I dug the Italian art film homage as well.

Some of the short are kinda blah, and some of this is really dated and rather tame in comparison to some of the stuff we get in today's films and television, but at least the segments are all pretty short with the next one just around the corner.

All in all, this film is kinda dumb, and lesser Woody, but I was amused just enough to feel comfortable giving it a very slight recommendation.