"Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)" (is this a long title for a movie or is this a long title for a movie?) is the most ambitious and expensive film that Woody Allen had made up to that point (1972) in his career. Here he gets his first (of many) casts filled with famous actors in big or small roles, there are special effects that hold up surprisingly well (especially in the laboratory sketch), and Allen experiments with all sorts of gimmicks: from all-Italian dialogue in one episode to black and white photography and intentionally bad picture quality in another. However, "Everything...." is also IMO the least successful of Woody's first films, at least in terms of laughs; it never comes close to matching "Bananas". While there are some characteristically witty Woody lines here (like "Before we know it, Renaissance will be here and we'll all be painting" or "Now we owe THEM a dinner!"), there are also some crude and tasteless lines that crash spectacularly ("I want to measure your respiration while they're gangbanging you"), as well as idiotic pieces of comedy (pretty much the entire transvestite sketch) that are more at the level of Benny Hill than Woody Allen. Some of the sketches (including the notorious "sheep" one) are too "one-joke" even for their brief running times. However, the entire film is largely redeemed by the seventh and final episode, which takes us inside the brain - and body - of a man on a date; this sketch is so imaginative and daring that, once you've seen it, you'll never forget it; it ranks right up there with such classic bits of comedy as the cabin scene in "A Night At The Opera". **1/2 out of 4.
