#20 | October 23 - November 5, 1997  

I'm speechless folks. This has happened before--Fargo, Safe, Better off Dead--but those were good speechlesses. This one's unpleasant, with some confusion tossed in as a preservative I guess. If I weren't getting paid by the word, I'd simply tell you that Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You is now playing at the American House of Cinema--and that it's a goddam musical. But a whore I am, so allow me to spread my lips and pontificate.

Now if it's a fact (which it almost certainly is) that the movies will screw you up, then it's undeniable sermon-on-the-mount-type gospel that musicals will screw you up epically. I mean it, folks--when was the last time you saw some dufus in an unrealistically checked blazer break into song while shopping for an engagement ring at Harry Winston's?

I'll be the first to admit that I'm coming from completely from the wrong side of the fence on this one--i.e., I can't stomach musicals. And I know the Woodster has a certain nostalgia when it comes to the "long-moribund genre of musical comedy" as was practiced in the glory days of Hollywood (whenever that might have been). Nostalgia can screw you up too, but not always. Take Radio Days, for example--a fine film that never once made we want to retch. You've still got to watch that old nostalgia factor, though. I may sing "Hungry Like the Wolf" in the shower, but I wouldn't recommend doing a documentary about it and all.

Not that Everyone is a documentary; it's a slightly tongue-in-cheek updating of the MusCom genre. But so what if you've got pregnant ladies, burn victims, and corpses (I won't even bring up the beggar who takes a solo in the opening scene) whooping it up in the production numbers? It may not be Andrew Lloyd Webber or Disney (although it is Miramax), but it's still a goddam musical. I know I should just be a nice reviewer and walk out of the theater with a goofy, Roger-Ebert grin on my face, but homey don't play dat. Or rather, can't.

I'm repeating myself here, so let's step back a bit: In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, the Woodster made a film called Manhattan. That one starts with Woody narrating a series of attempted novel openings over gorgeous black and white shots of the city and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" (before it became the United Airlines theme song). The finale of fireworks exploding over the Manhattan skyline as the piece comes to a close should seem embarrassingly bombastic. Somehow, though, the bumbling uncertainty of Woodrow's monologue makes it all damn near breathtaking. I even forget my pathological disgust for New York and New Yorkers every time I watch the goddam thing.

After the opening production number in Everyone, we get pretty much the same routine: NY cityscapes, voice-over, some old ditty. But the cityscapes are in putrid color and depressingly claustrophobic. The voice-over is by a full-of-herself granola girl (you know, a curly redhead type who goes to Columbia and considers herself a regular sexpot, but isn't) who introduces her stuffy, upper-eastside family. Her sister's fiancee is named Holden, for chrissake.

Are we to assume that Woody has finally gotten over his love of New York? The fact that his character in the movie now lives in Paris may be a hint in this direction. And the family of New York "intellectuals" couldn't be more stereotypically moronic and annoying in the way that only these types can be. Surely this is purposeful mockery. Somehow I don't buy it. Woody give up New York? That would be like Hitler coming around on the Jewish issue.

No, I think we're dealing with a very confused man here. Maybe the Soon-Yi media circus was just too much. Plus the guy's like 70 years old or something and still diddling teenagers. Who can blame him for getting a bit mushed in the head? At least that would explain the critical missteps here.

Take Drew Barrymore. Sure, she still gets a lot of residual play in the Conde Nast world of glossy print journalism, but--let's face it--she's old news. Yet Woody wastes precious minutes on Drew singing (a vocal stand-in actually, although you wouldn't guess it from the quality of the voice) in a skimpy nightgown or the seemingly endless balcony scene with the most obscenely erect nipples in "respectable" film history. And this when he's got Natalie Portman around to ogle. Anyone who has seen Leon/The Professional knows she's capable of a lot more than the filler bits of awkward teenager cliches she's reduced to here. I think that, deep down, Woody knows this, too.

Then there's Goldie Hawn. What's with her breasts, anyway? Did she have an operation to make them look like that? If not, could someone please ask her (discreetly, of course) to have one so that they look remotely normal (or at least to stop wearing hideous, low-cut outfits and sticking her boobs in the camera every five minutes)? I realize that she's supposed to be an integral part of the whole goofy-grin irresistibility of this movie, but all she does for me is arouse cringing.

Natasha Lyonne, who plays the Generation Granola narrator, is a much simpler issue. She's annoying. Period.

The pleasant surprises awaiting the masochist who still insists on watching this are few. Tim Roth is mildly amusing as a recently paroled mobster, especially when he tries (unsuccessfully) to maintain his wop accent during the songs. But any normal person would want De Niro to appear on-screen and shake his head disapprovingly at a sub-standard knockoff. If this movie were half as tongue-in-cheek as it is trying to be, De Niro would do just that.

And I suppose those who just can't get enough of Woody's signature pondering of the eternal themes--love and death--might get some enjoyment out of the parts when no one is singing. But the pacing is so erratic that the end product seems less like genuine Woody than the work of a young hack getting his Allen rocks off.

I guess Dr. Evil said it best: "There's nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster." Make that an aging nebbish.