Don't Ask

A few months ago, I caught a particular episode of the movie review show At the Movies. They were filling summer rerun season by broadcasting a classic episode from the early 80s starring Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. The two were debating who was the funnier filmmaker, Mel Brooks or Woody Allen?

That might well be a great barometer of one's taste in movies. I've long been a fan of Mel Brooks and have seen most of his films. On the other hand, I've seen relatively few Woody Allen films, and aside from some of his more recent work in which he does not appear as an actor, I haven't liked what I've seen.

I recently decided to take a chance on an Allen classic, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). It has done nothing to change my opinion of him.

But the film certainly does serve as a fine test case in the Brooks vs. Allen argument, as I think you could easily see The History of The World, Part 1 as Brooks' version of (or spiritual successor to) this film. Both are essentially sketch comedy films featuring a large cast of actors in brief vignettes. In Woody Allen's film (made almost a decade earlier), the vignettes take their titles from the chapters of a book on sex, popular at the time. But the titles serve as little more than jumping off points for some comedic premise.

The trouble is, most of them just aren't funny. A funny line drops in occasionally, perhaps one per sketch (out of seven total in the film), but the bulk of the sketches are quite dry. The puns are weak, the characters more like caricatures. In the last two sketches of the film, Allen seems to finally embrace the spirit of total zaniness, and the film manages to be a bit funnier. But overall, the wait getting there is just too long.

But what really drags this film down is how poorly it has aged. Very few movies can be said to be truly timeless and still appeal to audiences decades later. Comedies seem to have particularly short half-lifes. But this film is particularly archaic, as several of the sketches are predicated on forty-year-old attitudes about sex. It's all too benign to be considered offensive; it's simply not mean-spirited. But it's also just not funny.

I found it easily the worst of the Woody Allen movies I've sampled. I'd advise seeing it only as the prime case study in why Mel Brooks is a funnier filmmaker than Woody Allen. I rate it a D-.