Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

Year of Release:  1972
Director:  Woody Allen
Screenplay:  Woody Allen, based on the book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) by Dr. David Ruebens
Starring:  Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, John Carradine, Tony Randall, Burt Reynolds, Gene Wilder, Lynn Redgrave
Running Time:  84 minutes
Genre:  Comedy

This film is a selection of seven sketches inspired by questions relating to sex and sexual behaviour:  In medieval England a court jester (Allen) attempts to seduce the Queen (Redgrave); A respectable doctor (Wilder) falls in love with a sheep; An Italian man (Allen again) discovers that his wife (Lasser) can only reach orgasm in public places; A middle-aged married man (Lou Jacobi) takes to wearing women's clothing; A cheery 1950s game show attempts to teach America about sexual fetishes; A mad scientist (Carradine) unleashes a giant, monstrous breast on the world; A nervous sperm (Allen) prepares to leap into the great unknown.

The original book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, was a serious sex manual, which became a huge bestseller and was one of the most popular and influential non-fiction books of it's time.  Allen, here, takes chapter headings from the book, and spins them off into the comedy sketches.  The kind of sketch comedy format, while it has often been popular on TV (maybe not in the past few years, but it certainly used to be), never really works in movies, partly because because sketches tend to be hit or miss,  and also because they tend to be very lightweight, they are really either too short to get into, or they are too long to sustain the joke.  By and large this is funny, with each segment having at least one good laugh in it.  It belongs to the early part of Allen's career, when he really was trying to make straightforward comedies, without the dramatic or philosophical concerns that would later come to dominate. The film pokes fun at Shakespeare, Italian cinema, and science-fiction and horror movies.  The best segment is the last one; which takes place in the hi-tech control centre of a man's brain while he's on a date, with Allen as a nervous, white-uniformed sperm.  That last segment is inventive and very funny.
It's certainly worth watching, but I would point out that this is a product of the early 1970s and has not dated well in terms of it's attitudes and some of it's humor, so proceed with caution.

Woody Allen is going to tell you Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*  (*But Were Afraid to Ask)