Excellent, smart action film.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Watching this for the first time in 2018, it hasn't aged very well. Many of the jokes are dated and now unfunny or dated and now icky. The same goes for the questions it asks about sex. This all makes sense. Our understanding of sexuality has evolved over the past few decades, as has the vocabulary we use when discussing these matters. None of this necessarily makes this a bad movie-it just makes it a movie that's largely irrelevant today. Fortunately, Woody Allen has made a new movie every year for about 40 straight years, so you can easily watch some of his more recent work. For those still interested in watching this film, here's what you can expect: six independent stories that are meant to answer questions that people have about sex, but in a creative, entertaining way. It features wildly different stories and settings and characters from different time periods, in different countries, speaking different languages. All this is done to illustrate that all people across the world throughout history have been curious about, confused about and fascinated by sex.In certain ways, it's a success. The film is still largely amusing because Woody Allen is a talented filmmaker. Some stories work better than others, which is be expected. When it works, it works very well. A couple of the more ridiculous stories hold up because they're so intentionally absurd that there isn't really anything about them that is lost in the gap between the movie's release and the current date. With these absurd stories, and all of them really, don't expect to walk away with any clear answers to the questions that the film poses to introduce each segment. Answers aren't the goal. Allen is here to amuse us (and himself, no doubt) with ridiculous, debauchery-filled tales about colorful characters who are all fixated on their own sexual dilemma. Bottom line: this is far from a classic. You can comfortably skip it and rest assured that you aren't missing anything life-changing.

Forever unwilling to go with the flow of conventional movie making, Woody Allen went to the "off limits" topic of sex with his 1972 feature Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask. Bringing together an all-star cast including Gene Wilder, Burt Reynolds, and Tony Randall, in a way only Woody Allen can, in a series of vignettes to explore the book by David Reuben of the same title. Seven separate episodes make one movie, and the only thing they all have in common is their subject matter and the fact that they were excerpts from Reuben's book.In the first episode, Woody Allen acts as a jester trying to seduce the queen in an effort to find out if aphrodisiacs work. The second segment delivers Gene Wilder as a medical doctor dealing with a man who brings the confession to him that he is in love with a sheep, only to fall in love with the same sheep. The third segment again features Allen, as a married man who is having trouble giving his wife an orgasm, unless they have intercourse in public. The fourth segment involves a married man, who is a cross dresser, at a dinner party who just can't stay out of his wife's dresses. The fifth segment involves a game show where people share their deepest sexual secrets with a panel of celebrities trying to guess what they are. The sixth episode features a team of scientists and a runaway breast. The final vignette features Allen, again, this time as a sperm to illustrate for the audience what happens during ejaculation. Each scene, of course, with the brilliant comedic writing of Allen is a joy to watch, no matter how guilty you feel watching it.This film reminds me why I love Woody Allen. Really, is there a better comedic writer than him? I was happy to see Gene Wilder's segment early on. It's tough to watch anthology movie just to see one actor, so his being early on was a nice treat. Even though I started out watching this only for Gene, you'll stick with it for Woody Allen. I love his brand of humor, just above the brow, and wish more comedies of today could be like this. Wilder's performance as an M.D. who falls in love and starts a relationship with a sheep shows his range as an actor. He was funny and serious when necessary and illustrates his comedic acting abilities! The most incredible part of his performance was the 24-second scene that showed his reaction to the man in his office confessing his love for a sheep. That reaction is something all actors should aspire to, and needs to be required viewing at film schools and the like. Watching Gene Wilder in a Woody Allen film is enough to make one nostalgic for what could have been if only the two had more pairings. Of course, the collaboration between Wilder and Mel Brooks was incredible, likewise was the joining of he and Richard Pryor, but I wish there had been more Allen/Wilder films. Maybe it's not too late, these two legends are still with us, and although Wilder is retired from acting, perhaps a great Allen script could be the one to bring him back. I'll hold out hope, while enjoying the film they did make.

"Every Thing You Always … etc" is a sort of anthology movie, composed of seven different fragments sharing one and the same general theme, in this case (semi-)embarrassing sexual inquiries. The funniest thing about reading user-comments on anthologies, even more so than with regular long-feature films, is the diversity in people's opinions. Even when people reward the film with the same overall rating out of ten, you still read stuff like "segment #3 is inarguably the best part of the film" in the one review and "sketch number 7 towers head and shoulders" in another. Fact simply remains that tastes may vary, but general consensus at least confirms that this early Woody Allen effort is a fantastically entertaining – albeit wildly uneven – comedy achievement, with an original basic concept, a truly imaginative structure and several downright hilarious and unforgettable sequences. Also, and this is speaking from a more cinematic point of view, this is a brilliant film because nearly every separate fragment successfully parodies other and entirely different genres of filmmaking, like B-horror movies, Shakespearian plays, Science Fiction and talkative European sleaze flicks. Personally, I'm not the biggest expert on Woody Allen movies and I have yet to see the vast majority of his repertoire. But I don't plan to do so, as I already know that his newer work doesn't interest me that much. His earliest work, on the contrary, I find perplexing and utmost versatile. The ideas behind movies like "What's Up Tiger Lilly", "Bananas" and "Sleeper" are sheer genius. "Every Thing You Always … etc" is also like that. This movie is actually based on an existing educative book from a prominent doctor, but then made into a slapstick format, allegedly as some kind of revenge because this doctor used a Woody Allen joke during a lecture without mentioning the source. So the questions raised at the beginning of each segment are genuine, but the responses are obviously fictional and illustrated through the most incredibly grotesque situations and absurd characters. The query whether or not aphrodisiacs work, for example, is told through the tale of a clumsy castle jester who successfully seduces the queen with a love potion, but then literally bumps into her chastity belt. Or, in what is perhaps the most ingenious comical sketch ever scripted, we receive an answer to the question "what happens during the ejaculation?" through portraying the human brain as a NASA-like headquarters where engineers and switchboard operators instruct workmen to generate an erection and sperm cells to dive into the unknown. Call me biased, but inventing situations and one-liners like these requires absolutely brilliance and extremely talented writing skills. The younger Woody Allen had it. My own personal favorite episodes (since I don't feel entitled to label them as "best") include the aforementioned "What happens during the ejaculation?" and also "What are sex perverts?" The latter is presented in the shape of a prototypic 1950's TV-show, complete with black and white photography, inferior picture quality and truly doesn't avoid any taboos. And since I'm primarily a fan of old horror and cult movies, I also worshiped the episode "Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?" in a mad scientist – played by John Carradine – accidentally unleashes a gigantic and monstrous female breast upon a rural community. Honesty obliges me to state that sadly not all segments are equally terrific. The story with Gene Wilder, as a doctor falling in love with an Armenian sheep, is definitely courageous, but also quite tedious and not that laugh-out-loud funny. The Fellini parody is also interesting, but outstays its welcome as well. Woody Allen himself stars in four out of seven episodes (most notably as the petrified sperm) and he could also count on a strong supportive cast, including Lou Jacobi, Burt Reynolds and Lynn Redgrave. The film is an absolute must in case you seek out all legendary comedy classics.

Not really.Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) from 1972 isn't exactly an educational film about sex.No, it shows seven zany stories about sex and matters related to that.The first sequence, where Woody the court jester wants to make love to the queen, is funny.In the second, another funny one we see a doctor, played by the hilarious Gene Wilder, falling in love with a sheep.A sexual relationship between a man and a sheep is a taboo that Woody Allen wasn't afraid to use in this movie.Also, seeing Lou Jacobi in drag is, not really a taboo but funny all the same.What's My Perversion, hosted by Jack Barry with panelists such as Regis Philbin, could find a wide audience today.Let's mention a few other actors I haven't mentioned in this review.There's John Carradine playing Dr. Bernardo (in the one with the giant tit).Louise Lasser is Gina, who can reach orgasm only in public places.Anthony Quayle is The King while Lynn Redgrave plays The Queen.Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds are The Operator and Switchboard inside a man's brain.Sidney Lumet's father, Baruch Lumet, plays Rabbi Baumel with a perversion.The movie starts and ends with Cole Porter's "Let's Misbehave".The movie is based on Dr. David Reuben's book of the same name (1969), that I have been afraid to read.This movie is often hilarious, sometimes mildly amusing, but nevertheless classic Woody Allen.