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

1972 "You haven't seen anything until you've seen everything*"
6.7| 1h28m| R| en
Details

A collection of seven vignettes, which each address a question concerning human sexuality. From aphrodisiacs to sexual perversion to the mystery of the male orgasm, characters like a court jester, a doctor, a queen and a journalist adventure through lab experiments and game shows, all seeking answers to common questions that many would never ask.

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Reviews

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
ingemar-4 The movie about sex, showing no more nudity than one fake boob. This multi-sketch movie is a bit uneven for its own good, but on the other hand, the top is wonderful! I know that I have seen that one long ago, but if I saw the whole movie then I have forgotten the rest, and I can see why.Some reviewers have noted signs of Monty Python inspiration, I would widen the scope to British humor of the 70's. Let's return to that later.I will rate all the sketches with one to five stars.*** Jester sketch, "Do aphrodisiacs work?". Somewhat funny, but not enormously so. Kind of elegant ending though, and you might like Allen's bumbling jester trying to be funny. I suspect this is first because it was felt to be one of the best. ** Sheep sketch, "What is sodomy". The beginning, with a doctor (Gene Wilder) getting an odd visitor, is hilarious, with Wilder's confused expression and long pause when trying to grasp what he heard, and then struggling to stop the herd from bringing the sheep inside... but that's it. The rest of the sketch is plain unfunny. It should have stopped right at the moment when we see that the doctor falls for the sheep too. Period. Then it might have worked. ** Italian sketch "trouble reaching an orgasm" has the Italian as an odd spicing. Mildly amusing, when the husband (Allen) realizes what turns her on, but only mildly. * The transvestite sketch. It starts in a totally different direction, with a man irritated on friends showing off, and then switches to him dressing as a woman, jumping out the window to avoid getting caught in the act... and I just fast-forward, finding absolutely nothing to laugh about. ** What's my perversion, "what are sex perverts?", is another case like the sheep, a funny idea taken too far. As a parody of the famous "What's my line" this is really funny, but only for a short sketch. This runs tedious long before it is over. *** The mad scientist sketch (about sex research), although a slow starter, does make more points than most of the others, some crude but still there are some more memorable. The Frankenstein's Monster references are very strong but only marginally funny, and so are the doctor's experiments. I must say that there are some funny "research topics". On the negative, I must mention the big script flaw, where all the other people in the lab are forgotten after the disaster. What happens next is of course remarkable, we get something that really feels like an idea from the British Cambridge gang (remember Kitten Kong?), the ravaging giant breast that can only be captured with a giant bra! It is a totally bizarre idea, and funny in that sense. Also, the special effect budget was not tight here, the scene with the approaching giant tit and Allen luring it into capture is truly impressive (except that we never see the bra closing completely, I guess that was too hard)! But I still thinks I can rank it a bit above the rest. ***** Inside body scene, "What happens...": This is the absolute top of the entire movie, by far! The whole idea of viewing the body from the inside is not new, but can be very funny, and here it certainly is! Sperms as paratroopers (including Allen), and Burt Reynolds as brain cell, the brain as a command center, various body functions as departments... Lovely!All in all, I think Allen would have needed some more people writing, tightening up the gags a bit, raising the tempo in many of the sketches. There are fun moments, but they are often too far apart. One great sketch, two fairly funny and the rest pretty forgettable sketches is not enough for a great movie, but it doesn't make it an awful one either.
suite92 The Three Acts:The initial tableaux: The film is an anthology. Each story is about an aspect (or several) of sexual behaviour.a. Chastity belts and aphrodisiac potions in medieval times in England.b. Gene Wilder as a respected physician who falls in lust with a patient's sheep.c. Italian-speaking Woody Allen trying to be as macho as possible, but cannot initially find the key to his wife's satisfaction.d. A middle class man experiments with women's clothes.e. A game show, filmed in grainy black and white, has panelists attempting to guess the perversion of the guest.f. John Huston as the mad scientist rejected by Masters and Johnson. He's out to prove his strange theories. As a side effect (second part of the vignette), a giant mobile breast is created that terrorises the countryside. Allen and MacRae play a scientist and a journalist covering the action.g. Tony Randall quarterbacks the male brain's attempt to manage bodily resources during a hot romantic date.Delineation of conflicts: In each case, some aspect of sexual behaviour is explored. The vignettes are self-contained. The common thread, though, is that some private behaviour can become public, with consequences varying from embarrassment to jail to death.Resolution: The surfacing of private sexual behaviour is done for comic effect.
Per Johnsen I don't know if it was Monthy Python who inspired Woody Allen or opposite. Perhaps somehow it was both. I wanted to give Woody Allens series of segments 10 points, but i am afraid it lacks some quality to score that high. My favorite parts are with Gene Wilder falling in love with the sheep Daisy, maybe the best Gene Wilder ever got to do in terms of acting. And of course there's the ejaculation scene. Though the other scenes are funny enough, these two really stand out as something special. They both deserve 11 if it was possible. The main reasons to not giving this movie 10 points is the sloppy acting from some in the cast members, also by Allen himself, and that the directing seems to have been to hasty in several parts. That's too bad, because this could have been a real comedy classic.
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.