Review of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) by Brendan S — 20 Jan 2010

Ostensibly an "adaptation" of the bestselling book, EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX is the funniest and most thoroughly entertaining film Allen had directed to this point - in no small part due to the fact that the film is a series of sketches using chapter titles from the book ("What Is Sodomy?," "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?," etc) as springboards for a variety of innuendo-slinging farces featuring a wide array of stars (Gene Wilder, Lynn Redgrave and Regis Philbin to name just a few).

Instead of one drawn-out feature-length concept with a nonstop cache of unrelated one-liners, this film's episodic nature has the positive effect of not making the film exasperating as there is much variety to be had.

Some of the humor is eye-rolling, as is Allen's tendency at this point in his career, and the film as a whole is undoubtedly a silly one, but it's generally pretty solidly funny and the stylistic variety of the episodes (one aping Italian art cinema, another a poorly-broadcast TV game show) is a testament to Allen's growing strength as a director; for the first time, an amount of emphasis is placed on the visual content of a Woody Allen film.