Product Details

• Actors: Woody Allen, Gene Wilder, Louise Lasser, John Carradine, Lou Jacobi
• Directors: Woody Allen
• Writers: Woody Allen, David Reuben
• Producers: Charles H. Joffe, Elliott Gould, Jack Brodsky, Jack Grossberg, Jack Rollins
• Format: Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English, Italian
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• DVD Release Date: July 5, 2000
• Run Time: 88 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792846079
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,550 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A collection of vignettes, loosely based on the book by Dr. David Rueben, written and directed by Woody Allen, Everything contains some very funny moments. It's easy to forget that the cerebral Allen excelled at the type of broad, Catskill, dirty jokes and visual gags that run amok here. It's also remarkable how dirty this 1972 movie really was--bestiality, exposure, perversion, and S&M get their moments to shine. The Woody Allen here, who appears in many of the sketches, is a portent of the seedy old Allen of Deconstructing Harry. Although the final bit, which takes place inside a man's body during a very hot date, is hilarious, most of Everything feels like the screen adaptation of a '70s bathroom joke book. Still, a must for Allen fans. --Keith Simanton

Product Description

Woody Allen pushes the frontiers of comedy by consolidating his madcap sensibility and wickedly funny irreverence with his developing penchant for visually arresting humor. Giving complete indulgenceto the zany eccentricity of his medium, Allen reveals himself as a filmmaker of "wit, sophistication, and comic insight" (Cue). Allen rises to the occasion with several hysterical vignettes that probe sexuality's stickiest issues! Aphrodisiacs prove effective for a court jester (Allen) who finds the key to the Queen's (Lynn Redgrave) heartbut learns that the key to her chastitybelt might be more useful. Unnatural acts get wild and wooly when a good doctor (Gene Wilder) fallsfor a fickle sheep. Jack Barry gives fetishism 20 questions on a wacky TV show called "What's My Perversion?" Sex-research goes under the microscope when a mad scientist (John Carradine) unleashes a monstrous, marauding breast. And the absurdity comes to a frenzied climax with Tony Randall, Burt Reynolds and Allen as sperm having second thoughts about ejaculation!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very, Very funny. Not as durable as most Allen flics., May 6, 2005

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (DVD)

`Everything you always wanted to know about sex* (*But were afraid to ask)', written and directed by Woody Allen is Allen's third `triple credit' movie after `Take the Money and Run' and `Bananas', and his first with a large, `Big Name' cast. But unlike later movies such as `Interiors', `Hannah and her Sisters', and `Crimes and `Misdemeanors', this cast is probably less likely to have been assembled for the honor of working with Allen than for the very typical Hollywood casting strategy of filling a large number of roles which appear on the screen for a short time with recognizable faces, so you instantly know that Lou Jacobi, for example, is playing a very bourgeois, very middle class Jewish burgher who, we quickly discover, has a yen to dress up as a woman. We make the similar connection with Tito Vandis as a middle eastern shepherd, John Carradine as a mad Dr. Frankenstein-like scientist, Gene Wilder as a quirky and up-tight doctor and Tony Randall as a prim and very button down control room supervisor.

Allen's stock character is so well known by this time that among the four characters he plays, at least one is totally against type, where he has a part in a `La Dolce Vita' parody, in Italian with subtitles and all, as a character very similar to that of Marcello Mastroianni, in situations stolen directly from Fellini's junk drawer.

Here, Allen comes closer to Mel Brooks' style than in any other of his movies, going so far as to share Gene Wilder (a frequent Mel Brooks star) and a Mel Brooks parody subject (Frankenstein). Like Brooks, there are many patently improbable or impossible situations cooked up merely for the laughs. Later in their careers, Brooks and Allen diverge primarily with Allen's concentrating on literally deathly serious subjects with jokes while Allen stays with plots and situations which are light and humorous through and through.

Since both parody and visual humor are Allen strong points, he has a field day with not one but six different situations where the objects of parody are:

Aphrodisiacs and Fools in Medieval Castle
Sheep and Sodomy
Cross Dressing
TV Game Shows, Homosexuality, and Bondage
Monster Movies
Science Fiction / Antacid Commercials

While I think this movie does not hold up as well as almost all of this other early movies, it's great fun to see personalities and actors such as Regis Philbin (as himself), Robert Walden, and Anthony Quayle. Lynn Redgrave and Burt Reynolds in small roles. The parodies may not work that well with audiences under 30 who have no memory of TV shows such as `What's My Line' or of Italian movies from Fellini or Antonioni.

What is amazing is how totally unerotic the whole movie is. For the life of me, I don't see how it deserved an R rating except that young viewers may simply not see past the very unexplicit scenes involving sexual subjects to the total absurdity of the situations. This rating is probably a demonstration of the fact that the mere mention of sodomy/bestiality, homosexuality, bondage, and infidelity are seen as more dangerous to discuss than explicit sex. The bottom line is that while there is virtually nothing in the movie that is erotic to an adult, there is much which may be dangerous for an unprepared subteen to see.

The hard part of evaluating the movie in the long run is how well Allen's typically clever humor outweighs the thin and cheaply filmed parodies, where there is no attempt at all to hide the tongue in cheek (see Mel Brooks) attitude of the movie. In the end, this film is probably better (funnier) than `Love and Death' but not quite as totally inventive or funny as `Take the Money and Run'.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars just a silly funny move, May 11, 2003

By 

J. Colburn "germanyjon" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (DVD)

Don't listen to Adi's review, calling the film "juvenile"
Adi should watch some of today's teen exploits to find a true juvenile movie.
This film was far beyond its time, and is a SPOOF, like many comedies. If you don't believe most of the reviews, just rent it first........have a few drinks, and you'll laugh hard......

this is the one movie that made me "discover" the talent of Woody Allen, and I'm glad I did.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inconsistent... but brilliant at times, August 13, 2000

By 

Mike Stone - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I found this to be a very hit-or-miss affair. The scenes which Woody doesn't appear in ("Are transvestites homosexual?", "What's my perversion?", and "What is sodomy?") miss his comic touch. Granted, Gene Wilder is deliriously funny as a man in love with a sheep (shouldn't the segment have been called "What is bestiality?"), but the other scenes never rise above bad Saturday Night Live-style parody. The cross-dressing scene goes for cheap and easy laughs, while the tired cliché of a game show turned upside down has only one funny moment (the rabbi's wife grimly feasting on a plate of pork).

When Woody does appear in a scene, the film comes alive. The 'Woody' character works perfectly in an anthology about the confusing nature of sex, because that for me is the essence of his character. His sexual confusion and manic personality kicks every situation into a higher gear. The Fool he plays in the first scene - a hapless borscht-belt style comic transported to a medieval court - delivers great line after great line in ridiculous old English ("TB or not TB, that is congestion"). His Fellini-esque Fabrizio (in "Why do some women have trouble achieving orgasm?"), confused about the frigidity of his newlywed wife, plays it cool in his Mastroianni sunglasses and world-weary Italian. But you know this guy is a hapless shnook anyway, when his wife can only get turned on for sex when it's in a public place. His Victor Shakapopoulous (sp?) saves the world from - yes it's true - a giant "tit" (size 4000X for those of you scoring at home).

But the most wonderful scene is the last one, "What happens during ejaculation?" Taking a cue from "Fantastic Voyage", we see the bureaucratic inner workings of one man's body, including the control tower (conducted by Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds), the stomach (trying to process an unexpected order of fettuccini), the tongue (lubricated and rolled-out just in time to receive a kiss), and the penis (powered by sweaty men in workman's overalls). Woody shows up as a sperm, having second thoughts about ever volunteering for duty ("I hear some guys smash their heads on a hard, rubber wall!"). It is a great piece of satire, towering over the lukewarm parody of the rest of the pieces. Something tells me this last scene would have made a great feature-length movie itself.