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Show orth a laugh, not two bucks "Allen's latest flick :omes off as dirty joke i By GAYLAN NIELSON Chronicle Staff v wonder if when Dr. David Reu-i Reu-i wrote his famous book "Every-ig "Every-ig You Always Wanted to Know 3ut Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask" ever dreamed it would be made k i a movie. Well it has. And by less than Woody Allen. But I ider if he should have attempted feat. !o one, I assume, doubts the that Woody Allen is one of the st imaginative writers around. I e felt that he was probably the ert comedian, in the Charlie tplin slap-stick ranks, around, this time I have to question in-iively in-iively his motives. From idea to 1 the movie seemed self-indul-3ft and pretentious. t"pi the book Dr. Reuben would Jre questions down such as: lat happens during ejacula-'" ejacula-'" or "What is sodomy?" The movie is made up of several scenes that answers all, especially in Allen's Al-len's mind, about six questions from the book. "Do Aphrodesiacs Work?" It worked for the scene that followed. follow-ed. This was the best scene of the movie. Woody Allen played a fool (court jester) in a king's court. Rather than jumping all over and tying himself in knots he did stand-up stand-up comedy at an Allan King rate. This came off as a blazing piece of satire and possibly the way Allen feels about that kind of comedy which is so adverse to his own as exemplified in "Bananas" and "Play It Again Sam," his last movies. There is also a scene where he has his hand caught in the queen's chastity belt and he blurts, "We better hurry or the Renaissance Re-naissance will soon be here and we'll all be painting." Then the poor guy "fell on his bells." This tended to keep me rolling in laughs, chuckles and even guffaws at times at that old Allen style but the pace fell from there and never really recovered until the last. And by that time the mood had been so dimented that I had to think to laugh. Allen has really taken the structure struc-ture of the film and made it his game; "fun with puns." It was a great game except that it remained me of a football locker room where the team has set down to thumb through "tropic of Center." It came off as an extended metaphor of a really dirty joke. The gimmicks in the movie, to say the least, are amusing. There are large, building-size breasts attacking at-tacking Allen in an open field, that he heroically captures in a huge brazier. There is a scene much like "Fantastic Voyage'1 where al! the parts of the body prepare for a sexual triumph and Woody Allen plays a neurotic sperm. What else? However, a few scenes just press the limits of boredom and hyperbole. hyper-bole. One in particular is the "What is Sodomy" scene where Gene Wilder, a bright young doctor, falls in love with an Armenian sheep named Daisy. I hope to feel that I am seldom offended. This time I was. It pressed my stomach muscles mus-cles to nausea. Another scene that was just overdone to the limits was one where Allen and Louise Lasser play Italian lovers. She cannot can-not have an orgasm unless it's in a public place. Bizarre. As far as staging and ideas are concerned the Italian scene, with English subtitles and the scene that was shown as on a television screen called "What's My Perversion" Perver-sion" (a take-off from "What's My Line.") were very much in the old satiric style. The one thing that I can't stop thinking about are the other actors: John Carradine, Lou Jacobi, Anthony Quayle, Tony Randall, Lynn Redgrave, Burt Reynolds Rey-nolds and others who played some of the crappiest two-bit parts since Colburn and Burton were in "Candy." "Can-dy." But even though you may want to know more about sex; "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" may be worth a laugh, but it's just not worth two bucks. |