In the late 1960s one Dr David Reuben released a book entitled EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX *BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK. Woody Allen's 1972 "movie adaptation" uses the questions of Dr Reuben's question-and-answer format as the titles for 7 comedic sketches all on sexual themes. This was Allen's third conventional film, and his growing importance in Hollywood is evident from the film's all-star cast.
The opening "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?", set in medieval times, has Woody Allen as a court jester who seeks to seduce the queen. Most of the humour here consists of anachronism: the jester's jokes are too bad for even a borscht belt comedian, and the dialogue consists of Elizabethian stylings mixed with sexual terminology and crude slang from the present.
The following sketch, "What is Sodomy?", is for many viewers the very best. A New York City general practitioner (Gene Wilder) is visited by an Armenian shepherd who begs the doctor to restore the magic to his relationship with a cherished sheep. What ensues, with the doctor descending ever deeper into madness, is made hilarious by Wilder's committed performance and the dialogue is immensely quotable. Another high point of the film is "Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching an Orgasm?". Shot in black and white and with an Italian dialogue, the segment is Allen's homage to the cool ambiance of Antonioni and Fellini. Allen plays a suave, sunglasses-wearing film director who cannot manage to satisfy his wife, played by Louise Lasser, until they begin having risky sex in public places. The fun comes not only in the challenges the man must face in making his wife happy, but also in Allen's ridiculous accent while speaking Italian.
In "Are Transvestites Homosexuals?", Lou Jacobi plays a man who sneaks upstairs while at a dinner party in order to wear his hostess' clothes, and subsequently gets himself deeper and deeper in trouble. It's humorous enough, but one wonders if this segment were stronger when the film was first released. Judging from its high frequency in big Hollywood films of the 1960s and early 1970s, cross-dressing must have once been a much funnier concept in that era. The following "What Are Sex Perverts?" is a parody of the game show What's My Line? where a panel of minor celebrities try to guess the perversion of a contestant, who wins $5 for every wrong guess. This is quite funny, but far too brief, as the concept could have been stretched out a bit more.
"Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?" is a Frankenstein parody where Allen and Heather MacRae play recently acquainted sex researchers who meet a great sexologist (John Carradine), only to discover that he's a diabolical madman. The first half of this segment is pretty funny, as Allen and MacRae make their way through the doctor's castle of horrors. But the second half, when the pair seeks to defeat a giant breast ravaging the countryside, is some of the lamest humour I've seen in some time.
The characters of the last segment, "What Happens During Ejaculation?", are personifications of the organs as a man goes on a date with a woman. The brain is depicted as a NASA mission control, with Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds struggling to coordinate bodily functions. They call down to the stomach (men carting off a newly-arrived load of fettucini), and the genitals (blue-collar joes working an enormous pump), as well as other places. Much here will make you chuckle, such as the captured "saboteur" of the man's sexual ambitions, his conscience, depicted as a priest in a Roman collar, and Allen's performance as a sperm cell terrified of making the leap into the unknown. All in all, however, I find this quite dated as well.
While my overall impressions is that EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX is quite dated, it's funny enough, and the portions with Allen as an Italian lover and Wilder as a befuddled doctor make it worth seeing at least once.
The opening "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?", set in medieval times, has Woody Allen as a court jester who seeks to seduce the queen. Most of the humour here consists of anachronism: the jester's jokes are too bad for even a borscht belt comedian, and the dialogue consists of Elizabethian stylings mixed with sexual terminology and crude slang from the present.
The following sketch, "What is Sodomy?", is for many viewers the very best. A New York City general practitioner (Gene Wilder) is visited by an Armenian shepherd who begs the doctor to restore the magic to his relationship with a cherished sheep. What ensues, with the doctor descending ever deeper into madness, is made hilarious by Wilder's committed performance and the dialogue is immensely quotable. Another high point of the film is "Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching an Orgasm?". Shot in black and white and with an Italian dialogue, the segment is Allen's homage to the cool ambiance of Antonioni and Fellini. Allen plays a suave, sunglasses-wearing film director who cannot manage to satisfy his wife, played by Louise Lasser, until they begin having risky sex in public places. The fun comes not only in the challenges the man must face in making his wife happy, but also in Allen's ridiculous accent while speaking Italian.
In "Are Transvestites Homosexuals?", Lou Jacobi plays a man who sneaks upstairs while at a dinner party in order to wear his hostess' clothes, and subsequently gets himself deeper and deeper in trouble. It's humorous enough, but one wonders if this segment were stronger when the film was first released. Judging from its high frequency in big Hollywood films of the 1960s and early 1970s, cross-dressing must have once been a much funnier concept in that era. The following "What Are Sex Perverts?" is a parody of the game show What's My Line? where a panel of minor celebrities try to guess the perversion of a contestant, who wins $5 for every wrong guess. This is quite funny, but far too brief, as the concept could have been stretched out a bit more.
"Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?" is a Frankenstein parody where Allen and Heather MacRae play recently acquainted sex researchers who meet a great sexologist (John Carradine), only to discover that he's a diabolical madman. The first half of this segment is pretty funny, as Allen and MacRae make their way through the doctor's castle of horrors. But the second half, when the pair seeks to defeat a giant breast ravaging the countryside, is some of the lamest humour I've seen in some time.
The characters of the last segment, "What Happens During Ejaculation?", are personifications of the organs as a man goes on a date with a woman. The brain is depicted as a NASA mission control, with Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds struggling to coordinate bodily functions. They call down to the stomach (men carting off a newly-arrived load of fettucini), and the genitals (blue-collar joes working an enormous pump), as well as other places. Much here will make you chuckle, such as the captured "saboteur" of the man's sexual ambitions, his conscience, depicted as a priest in a Roman collar, and Allen's performance as a sperm cell terrified of making the leap into the unknown. All in all, however, I find this quite dated as well.
While my overall impressions is that EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX is quite dated, it's funny enough, and the portions with Allen as an Italian lover and Wilder as a befuddled doctor make it worth seeing at least once.