Everyone Says I Love You

Woody Allen takes us back to the true form Broadway musical and adds splashes of droll, post-modern sensibility and humor. A charming film. The balance of characters and their foibles, showtunes and milieu. Existentialist song and dance with a touch of dark romance.

This is a wonderfully funny story, affectionately parodying old-time musicals, and evoking a nostalgic regret that they are not being made any more. Some of the vocalizations are amateurish (Alan Alda is an exception) but Dick Hyman's musical arrangements and the performances of the musicians are fine. Alda's rendition of the old Cole Porter song "Thinking of You", accompanied by the marvelous Dick Hyman on the piano, is first rate.

Woody Allen provides many hilarious moments. He uses the great violinist Itzhak Perlman as the punch line to a carefully constructed gag. He uses the invasion of privacy of a session of psychoanalysis as an offbeat plot device. He satirizes the romantic young and the do-gooding impulses of the old. He takes us from Manhattan to Venice and Paris. He involves us in old tunes and comically elaborate dance routines. He gives us a good time.

Everyone Says I Love You is one of the very few movies I have ever gone back to the theater to see another time. I even bought the tape.

Psychologist Steffi Dandridge (Goldie Hawn) and lawyer Bob Dandridge (Alan Alda) head a liberal upper class Manhattan family. The extended family includes Steffi's ex Joe Berlin (Woody Allen), their daughter Djuna Berlin (Natasha Lyonne), Skylar (Drew Barrymore), Lane (Gaby Hoffmann), Laura (Natalie Portman), grandpa with dementia and the black sheep Republican son Scott (Lukas Haas). Holden Spence (Edward Norton) is in love with Skylar. Von (Julia Roberts) is one of Steffi's patients. Charles Ferry (Tim Roth) is an ex-con.

This is a Woody Allen musical. The music is easy listening and everybody does a good job singing. Some are surprisingly good but the songs aren't terribly challenging. The overwhelming family can be hard to take. I would have preferred some trimming of the family tree. It would have been better to concentrate on one relationship. The effect is a bit scatter shot.

Woody Allen, one of my absolute favorite film directors, goes against the grain of his normal outings with a very creative cinematic device which involves making a bright, happy musical that takes the course of a normal film starring actors who've never sung before singing with their normal voices in musical numbers with no truly professional dancers. With this vastly fun element of the movie, Allen shows us life if any old person broke out into song. And that is what makes it an even more pleasant and encouraging escape that many other normal musicals.

One has never before looked at a cast the same way. I wonder what reviews were like. I can say that Alan Alda, who's always fun, has one of the very best voices in the film and even plays the piano. The same goes for Goldie Hawn, who apparently was scared to death of singing in the film. She's also still extremely hot. Julia Roberts plays a very very serious role and never sings, but it was definitely interesting to observe what she and Woody are like on screen together. He carries the scenes, and she loyally follows. Natascha Lyonne is the definite highlight of the cast, playing a hyperconfident girl in that midpoint between girl and woman whose flights of fancy make her extremely fickle with men. Edward Norton, one of the best contemporary actors we have, is actually not at his best in this film. It feels like he just doesn't know how to get comfortable in his role. His voice is OK. Billy Crudup, in a small role, is actually quite unexpectedly funny in a little number in a cab with a Middle Eastern driver. Tim Roth, an unexpected addition to the bit players like Crudup, has a great non- singing role that recalls the genre he's been working in for most of his career.

Where a lot of musicals repel most people because of their agonizingly featherweight stories, this one does what a great musical is supposed to do, which is lift your spirits and make you feel the very deepest potential of life's beauty that can possibly be pulled out of it, and because of Allen's unorthodox method, it nails it. It's one of my favorite musicals, of which there are few. It's a very interesting ensemble epic that involves all different strands pertaining to the love life and newfound wisdom of each member of a wealthy and happy family.

A fresh and original musical comedy, the film takes classic songs and fits them into a new vision with some different dance routines. The choreography is lively and the actors and actresses do not look like professional dancers, which helps to make the music and dance side more natural. It is still as witty and funny as one would expect from a Woody Allen comedy, and the ensemble cast brings forth some great performances, even from actresses such as Goldie Hawn and Drew Barrymore who are not usually amazing. Other than light commentary on love and romance in New York and international society, the film is lacking in depth, some of the sequences are overdone and the narration tires as it progresses, but generally the film is well made. It also possesses a charm that helps it to swing along, and it becomes easy to accept different sequences, given that it is a musical that one is watching. The film will however best be enjoyed by those who are familiar with its redone songs.