Konterr
Brilliant and touching
Breakinger
A Brilliant Conflict
Marva-nova
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
junk-monkey
Every now and then for the last couple of decades I have taken the occasional look at a Woody Allen film (with as open a mind as I can muster) in an attempt to work out what it is that people seem to adore about him so much. Having just read an extended magazine interview with the man in which he came over as a genuinely likeable human being I thought I was in a good place to have another go at finding what 'it' is.Whatever it is I didn't see it here. You would have thought with a title like 'A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy' there would have been some sex or comedy in it. Apart from one throwaway line line delivered near the end of the thing which was genuinely funny - more for the delivery rather than the content - the film didn't raise a smile! And the sex was endless talk about off- screen activity and a couple of 'humorous' on-screen sub Benny Hill fumbles.I remember hearing an interview with Jack Lemmon, many years ago, in which he said that when Billy Wilder was directing him in a scene in 'Some Like it Hot' Wilder gave him a pair of maracas to hold, and told him to shake them after Tony Curtis said his line and stop before he delivered his own. Lemmon was perplexed. The scene's dialogue was a snappy and rapidfire to and fro interchange. The maraca shaking would slow it down to a crawl. But Wilder was the director and Lemmon did what he was told. When Lemmon saw the film with an audience he understood. Curtis' s line were funny. So were Lemmons'. If Lemmon had come in with his line as soon as his actor's instincts told him to, the audience would not have heard it because they were still laughing at Curtis's previous line. His line would have been lost. Curtis's next line would make no sense... and the scene would have collapsed like a house of cards. Wilder knew where the laughs were and built space into his direction to let the audience enjoy them. Allen doesn't leave any space for the audience. We're not given any space to get the' jokes' (such as they are) because there's always someone talking straight after them. What they are saying is usually inane piffle and by the time you've registered that what they are saying is of little consequence and not a zinging comeback (if was generous I could concede that a lot of the inconsequential dialogue here is Allen's carefully crafted, verbal equivalent of maraca shaking) any humour in the 'joke' that just went past has evaporated.The less said about Allen's helpless, "oh look at me,I'm so clumsy" shtick the better.I'll give it a couple of years and have another go and seeing what the Allen cultist adore so much.
gavin6942
A wacky inventor (Woody Allen) and his wife (Mary Steenburgen) invite two other couples for a weekend party at a romantic summer house in the 1900s countryside.This was the first of thirteen movies that Allen would make starring Mia Farrow, and quite possibly the worst. Farrow was nominated for a Razzie Award, making this the only Allen film to get any such nomination. Indeed, Farrow is terrible here, and it seems bizarre that she is the object of more than one character's affections. Steenburgen, on the other hand, is quite charming and is given an unfortunate role.This is one of Allen's lesser works, and definitely not a financial success. But it is not without its merits. The characters (other than Farrow) are good fun, and there is plenty of that classic intellectual fodder Allen loves to have his characters spout.
Lee Eisenberg
"A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" is one of Woody Allen's movies making fun of rich people's relationships. Based on an Ingmar Bergman movie that I haven't seen, it depicts some couples spending the weekend with an inventor (Allen) and his wife (Mary Steenburgen). The six of them then proceed to start having affairs with each other! The movie's downside is of course that Woody Allen started obsessing on neurotic rich people having affairs, and eventually reached an all-time nadir with "Everyone Says I Love You". Even so, what the movie itself shows is some really funny stuff. More than anything, it demonstrates that Allen is at his best when just trying to be funny ("Take the Money and Run", "Bananas", "Sleeper"). Other than that, the movie has some typical Woody Allen-style lines, and an almost mystifying ending. Really interesting. Also starring José Ferrer, Mia Farrow (in her first appearance in an Allen movie), Tony Roberts and Julie Hagerty (of "Airplane!" fame).
Gavin567
This movie features shallow characters, mildly amusing shtick, and early 1980s New York acting school pseudo-intellectuals placed back in 1900 for a weak parody of Bergman's "Smiles of Summer Night. " The title, score, and some silly supernatural effects suggest fairies or spirits to add a nod to Shakespeare, but the themes that both Shakespeare and Bergman delineate in their wonderful works are not even remotely touched on by Allen, who turns the magic of sex and love and its attendant pain into...shtick. Allen once admitted that in his lifetime he would never make a film as good as any film Bergman made; at least he knew his limitations. Allen was a comedian working in a post sexual revolution era where sex had to be covered up by jokes and special effects, the way it's been for any mainstream American movie of the past 35 years. This parody of Bergman thinly disguises a love of Bergman, and only serves to highlight the glaring differences in scope between Bergman's film and Allen's film. It follows in a Hollywood and vaudeville comic tradition of mocking the highbrow for the benefit of middlebrow tastes, but is not irreverent or incisive enough to produce real laughs. This may be partly because it's so one-sided, with all of the fantasies and neuroses coming from a male consciousness, whereas Bergman and Shakespeare (not to mention the great farce writers, such as Feydeau), always gave men and women equal representation.
