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cin-e-rama: triptych format (three cameras, three projectors) employing a high, wide, deeply curved, three-panel screen, yielding a panorama that extended nearly to the limits of peripheral vision; introduced in 1952.
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Woody Loses His Cool
Not everything in Everyone Says I Love You is bad; on the contrary, the older actors in the film put in good work here. Alan Alda gives a nicely understated performance as Bob, the liberal patriarch of an Upper East Side family. Goldie Hawn evinces a newfound maturity as Steffi, Bob's wife. Hawn lends humor and sexiness to her role as a wealthy woman stricken with liberal guilt. Edward Norton shows some range as Holden, the fiancee of Bob and Steffi's daughter. Although Norton is cast well, other young actors in the movie are not. While watching the film, I kept wondering why Woody Allen was courting banal Gen-X'ers such as Lukas Haas and Drew Barrymore. Maybe Allen thought he was getting some cool young blood; neither actor is in his league. Natasha Lyonne, as the narrator of the movie, is too smug to be endearing, and Natalie Portman, who was so good in Beautiful Girls, is wasted here in her role as a giddy schoolchild. The ensemble musical numbers are the highlights of this film. In these sequences, a spirit of exuberance infuses the cast as random characters get caught up in the screwball fanfare. In one scene, Norton's character breaks into song after buying an engagement ring. As Norton gamely tries to dance, the debonair salesmen and glamorous saleswomen twirl expertly around him. Another highlight of the movie is a costumed Christmas Eve ball in Paris, at which everyone wears Groucho Marx disguises. Wryly smirking under his painted mustache, Allen gracefully acknowledges a comedic predecessor. The best scene of the movie occurs on the banks of the Seine, where Allen and Hawn share a moonlit dance. The singing throughout the movie is terrible. Although this is partly the point, certain songs (particularly the solos by Barrymore and Allen) are likely to harm sensitive ears. What's missing most from Everyone Says I Love You is the dark-edged humor that made Allen's best films--Annie Hall and Manhattan--so wrenching and so enjoyable. Rating (1-5): 2.5
Everyone Says I Love You (1997)
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It's an inauspicious beginning to a Woody Allen movie: early on,
we learn that that in his new musical film, Everyone Says I
Love You, Allen plays a character who lives not in New York City,
but in Paris. Separated from his Muse, Allen's jokes fall flat, and his work becomes more charade than spoof.