Pretty Good

Good movie but grossly overrated

A Masterpiece!

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

DJ(Lyonne, a typical teen girl - and our narrator), the daughter of heartbroken divorced Joe(Allen, his typical neurotic self, needing pushing by loved ones) sets him up with the unhappily married Von(Roberts, sweet, and... well, she doesn't have a lot of personality). Without her knowing. ...well, the latter's in therapy, and the former listens in. That old story. And along the way there are subplots, and this is, at its core, about falling in love, its effect on what one thinks about the future, and how sudden it can be - even when already infatuated with someone else.I don't often watch musicals, but this one is irresistible. Charming, hilarious with fast-paced dialog, background reactions, quick throwaway lines, and a memorable cast of characters, all of whom are portrayed by talented and well-known actors. The big numbers(and just *try* to stop humming them) are dominated by long takes and few cuts, with everyone in the vicinity singing and/or dancing, such as the early scene in the ER where doctors, nurses and patients giving it their all. There are sit-com-like misunderstandings and some pretty evenly divided political jokes, with the Republican son(hey, he has his reasons... maybe you'll learn them in this) and the liberal rest of the family. It takes place over a year, taking us around New York, Venice and Paris. The running time is 94 minutes sans credits.There is a little strong language in this. I recommend this to anyone who is at all into this type of film. 7/10

"Love is a Many-Splendored Thing" says the song. Well in Woody Allen's case, love can be described as many-handled theme.Indeed, whether portrayed as an inexhaustible source of intellectual torments, an unreachable holy grail or an emotional dead-end, love has always been in the core of Woody Allen's oeuvre. Even in his zaniest days, Allen featured romantic walks in a bucolic site or deep interactions in a well-chosen spot of New York or any place of the world. The seminal "Take the Money and Run", had a very touching romantic subplot leading to much more magnitude in "Manhattan" and "Hannah of Her Sisters" before being treated in a skeptical and disillusioned way in "Husbands and Wives" from the light of Allen's separation with Mia Farrow.This brief preamble is to show that almost every facet of love has been depicted by Woody Allen. So, with such a title as "Everyone Says I Love You", his twenty-something film, I didn't know how high to put my expectations. I guess Roger Ebert's enthusiastic endorsement made me expect fireworks of emotions, something on the same arousing level as "Manhattan"'s opening sequence …. But what I got was a firecracker. The film is cute, charming, with sweet interactions between enamored characters, but nothing affected me like all the films I mentioned. Even the parts set in Venice and Paris, instead of enhancing the romance, irritated me with their superficial postcard quality.I understand that superficiality was intended to embody the lightheartedness and spontaneity of these characters struck by Cupid's arrow. I understand Allen didn't plan to preach or speak philosophical statements about love, but just let the hearts express through spontaneous outbursts of singing and dancing. But this is where we come to the main flaw, which alas is the reason-to-be of the film: the music. I enjoyed the hospital sequence, the part where a bunch of ghosts from beyond the grave give the living some precious advice, and the surrealistic climax in Paris where Goldie Hawn, in a superbly executed sequence started floating in the air. But the rest of the music didn't touch me, and my heart is not made of stone.I've got to hand it though to Woody for the risk he took by letting the actors perform with their own voice, it startles in the beginning but we quickly get used to it. When the film opened with young Holden (Edward Norton) sining his love to Skylar, an upper-class girl of Manhattan (Drew Barrymore), I respected Allen's audacity for materializing this idea that we all sing when we're happy and how we sing hardly matters. But how greater would the surprise have been if the songs were really catchy and didn't seem randomly perturb the narrative structure. Maybe there weren't many musicals at that time so the film had a fresh quality but the soundtrack was not the highlight, which is saying a lot for a musical.A good point was the titular "Everyone", which relied on a great ensemble. There is Goldie Hawn as Steffi, the guilty-ridden rich mother and Alan Alda as Bob, her husband, both the best friends of the neurotic Joe, Steffi-ex-husband, contemplating suicide after many failed romances and played by you-know-who. There is also a scene-stealing performance from Natasha Lyonne, as Steffi and Joe's daughter DJ, trying to get her father in touch with Von, Julia Roberts, a therapist whom she happens to know all her secrets and fantasies. There were also fine performances from Lukas Haas as the Republican son (the reasons of his political orientation was the kind of comedy gold the film needed in more quantity) and last, but not least, Tim Roth made a believable released prison mate falling in love with Skylar and causing her to breakup.The film had the same potential than "Hannah and Her Sisters", but I was disappointed by the easy ways Allen chose to close his characters' arcs. The kind of emotionality provided by Dianne Weist' last line from "Hannah" was totally missing, which can be forgivable since it's a comedy, but the wit was frustratingly inexistent and only confined to some predictable gags such as a wedding ring, hidden in a cake and getting swallowed by the future bride. This also would have been forgettable if it wasn't for the central romance between Woody Allen and Julia Roberts. We know it's doomed from the beginning, because of the whole plotting, they had to break up so Joe would finally realize he's still in love with Steffi and can enjoy such good moments like a Groucho Marx party in Paris, one of these things that makes life worth living. But his separation was nowhere close to the level of poignancy or comedy reached by "Manhattan".Just like Skylar who breaks up with Holden to eventually reconcile, Joe cheats with Von, she goes with him, until realizing that having fulfilled her fantasy of living with the perfect man, she's got nothing much to fantasize about, it was cynically anticlimactic, and convincing, but for a film that pretends to be a comedy, I expected more, at least, enough to give Julia Roberts a shining moment and not reduce her to the beautiful actress who stars in a Woody Allen film. That also was announcing another Allenian trend when he became Europe's darling, each film raising the big question about his casting. Allen has always been one of my favorite directors, but when he became a 'hip' phenomenon, something of his touch was kind of lost.Now, after watching his interview he gave to a French magazine in the DVD features, I started to look at his film with more indulgence, respecting his desire to make a personal tribute to old-fashioned musicals. But as much as I wanted to love "Everyone Says I Love You", it was nowhere close to Allen's top 10 best films, not even to his next film, "Deconstructing Harry", which I thought was perfect.

A cute, inventive film with a couple of great musical numbers, and some fun characters (Tim Roth in particular is terrific), but lacking any sense of depth. For me, this doesn't hold up on repeated viewings nearly as well as most Allen films. It feels more one joke on returning to it. Almost every Allen film I've seen has only grown on me with time, with additional layers and themes becoming evident. This was a rare exception.Still Allen's overall playful use of musical techniques makes this worth at least one viewing. I'd still rather see a flawed work by a master, than most of what's available.

What a disappointment but I have to say that I knew from the first scene that this would not be one of his best. The songs are extremely average, nothing spectacular about them at all! And most of the characters are uninteresting shells.Some of the scenes (in fact most of them) seem like early rehearsal. Especially the parts with Tim Roth who usually is a very talented actor.To make things worse there's just a few funny jokes in here. In fact other than the narration from Natasha Lyonne, a few decently funny moments between Alda and his republican son and Allens regular character + a dance group consisting of Grouco Marx look-a-likes are the only worthwhile parts of the film.It felt extremely uninspired and rather annoying at times. What was the Julia Robers sub-plot for example was extremely unfunny and just plain annoying.It seemed like this film didn't know what to make fun of or how to do it. Most of the time the dialog is just tame and uninteresting and it just seems like it tries so hard without making it.That said Natasha Lyonne and Alan Alda was great. Allen was good but weaker than usual. Again a few funny moments. I actually laughed out loud once or twice but overall this was just decent and by far Woody Allens weakest film.