SavvyDalmia I don't know why films like this one aren't made anymore. (Probably because PCness has made it really hard to get away with a lot of jokes.) Equal parts ridiculous and shocking, perhaps a bit too shocking for delicate sensibilities, the film does not have a boring moment. Thoroughly entertaining, extremely noneducational, and highly hilarious.

oOoBarracuda Forever unwilling to go with the flow of conventional movie making, Woody Allen went to the "off limits" topic of sex with his 1972 feature Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask. Bringing together an all-star cast including Gene Wilder, Burt Reynolds, and Tony Randall, in a way only Woody Allen can, in a series of vignettes to explore the book by David Reuben of the same title. Seven separate episodes make one movie, and the only thing they all have in common is their subject matter and the fact that they were excerpts from Reuben's book.In the first episode, Woody Allen acts as a jester trying to seduce the queen in an effort to find out if aphrodisiacs work. The second segment delivers Gene Wilder as a medical doctor dealing with a man who brings the confession to him that he is in love with a sheep, only to fall in love with the same sheep. The third segment again features Allen, as a married man who is having trouble giving his wife an orgasm, unless they have intercourse in public. The fourth segment involves a married man, who is a cross dresser, at a dinner party who just can't stay out of his wife's dresses. The fifth segment involves a game show where people share their deepest sexual secrets with a panel of celebrities trying to guess what they are. The sixth episode features a team of scientists and a runaway breast. The final vignette features Allen, again, this time as a sperm to illustrate for the audience what happens during ejaculation. Each scene, of course, with the brilliant comedic writing of Allen is a joy to watch, no matter how guilty you feel watching it.This film reminds me why I love Woody Allen. Really, is there a better comedic writer than him? I was happy to see Gene Wilder's segment early on. It's tough to watch anthology movie just to see one actor, so his being early on was a nice treat. Even though I started out watching this only for Gene, you'll stick with it for Woody Allen. I love his brand of humor, just above the brow, and wish more comedies of today could be like this. Wilder's performance as an M.D. who falls in love and starts a relationship with a sheep shows his range as an actor. He was funny and serious when necessary and illustrates his comedic acting abilities! The most incredible part of his performance was the 24-second scene that showed his reaction to the man in his office confessing his love for a sheep. That reaction is something all actors should aspire to, and needs to be required viewing at film schools and the like. Watching Gene Wilder in a Woody Allen film is enough to make one nostalgic for what could have been if only the two had more pairings. Of course, the collaboration between Wilder and Mel Brooks was incredible, likewise was the joining of he and Richard Pryor, but I wish there had been more Allen/Wilder films. Maybe it's not too late, these two legends are still with us, and although Wilder is retired from acting, perhaps a great Allen script could be the one to bring him back. I'll hold out hope, while enjoying the film they did make.

gridoon2018 "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)" (is this a long title for a movie or is this a long title for a movie?) is the most ambitious and expensive film that Woody Allen had made up to that point (1972) in his career. Here he gets his first (of many) casts filled with famous actors in big or small roles, there are special effects that hold up surprisingly well (especially in the laboratory sketch), and Allen experiments with all sorts of gimmicks: from all-Italian dialogue in one episode to black and white photography and intentionally bad picture quality in another. However, "Everything...." is also IMO the least successful of Woody's first films, at least in terms of laughs; it never comes close to matching "Bananas". While there are some characteristically witty Woody lines here (like "Before we know it, Renaissance will be here and we'll all be painting" or "Now we owe THEM a dinner!"), there are also some crude and tasteless lines that crash spectacularly ("I want to measure your respiration while they're gangbanging you"), as well as idiotic pieces of comedy (pretty much the entire transvestite sketch) that are more at the level of Benny Hill than Woody Allen. Some of the sketches (including the notorious "sheep" one) are too "one-joke" even for their brief running times. However, the entire film is largely redeemed by the seventh and final episode, which takes us inside the brain - and body - of a man on a date; this sketch is so imaginative and daring that, once you've seen it, you'll never forget it; it ranks right up there with such classic bits of comedy as the cabin scene in "A Night At The Opera". **1/2 out of 4.

Neil Welch Back in the days when the Victorian attitude towards sex was finally starting to loosen up a bit ie. the 1960s, the book Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask) sold in lorryloads. Hollywood being the greedy, acquisitive machine it still is, snapped up the film rights and then discovered that what was essentially a fairly serious self-help book, aimed at enlightening Joe Public about areas where he was interested but which simply hadn't ever been talked about until now, was essentially unfilmable.Enter Woody Allen. Operating at the top of his game (his initial game, that is, humorist par excellence), Allen plucks 7 of Dr Reuben's chapter headings and, for each of them, constructs an illustrative sketch.I say "illustrative", but of course they are no such thing. I have three images which remain indelibly imprinted on my brain from watching this film 40 years ago. One is a gigantic independent breast escaping majestically across the countryside, another is gene Wilder (in possibly the best performance of his career) falling in love, at first sight, with a sheep (and someone else's sheep, at that), and the last one is the chaos in Mission Control as the paratroop sperm jostle for position in order to make their one and only leap into action.It's insane. It's clever. It's very very funny.