Not everyone loves Allen's musical montage

By Chris Schmidt

FCOURTESY US MAGAZINE

Woody Allen

Rumor has it that the actors in Woody Allen's latest, the musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You, held an informal contest to see who, among their uniformly tone-deaf ranks, could in fact sing the worst. Though the look of pained concentration on Julia Roberts' face as she attempts to serenade Allen on the banks of Venice's Grand Canal stands as unforgettable evidence to the contrary, once you've heard her sing, you'll know whence the rumor springs. Certainly the contest would have a winner in Drew Barrymore, who, channelling the spirit and hair of Olivia Newton John, sings a bedtime song of love into her hairbrush (where, oh where, is Stockard Channing when you need her?) The ballsy Allen of yore would have supplied her with a guardian angel, or at least a poodle skirt; today's milder Woody merely has her dubbed. Not that I mind the dubbing: what bothers me is that she's the only one.

The posters hail Everyone Says I Love You as a long overdue adaptation of the movie musical to the '90s--a clever ploy to divert attention from the movie's lack of plot. As if to distract further from this absense, Allen has his narrator, his fictional daughter D.J., describe every character in the movie in a frenetic opening voiceover: mother, sisters, stepfather, dog, Bavarian housekeeper--finally, out of breath, she asks ingenuously, "Are you getting all this?"

Actually, no--but the effect is dizzying enough to fool us into thinking Allen's rushing because he's got a lot of ground to cover. He used the same off-hand storytelling technique in Mighty Aphrodite, and both movies ultimately prove to be one-trick wonders. Allen doesn't seem to be interested in character or tension anymore, he just wants to show you his really cool idea. What if, as in Mighty, the natural mother of your adopted child turned out to be a hooker? Or, as in Everyone, you were able to find out from your lover's therapist all her romantic fantasies, from her intellectual passion to sexual technique, and then fulfill them? In Everyone, Allen does just this with Roberts; and it works for about three scenes, until she realizes that fantasies are fantasies for a reason. Allen retorts, "Well, s-, but supposing I said to you that I've been...playing this character just to...win you over?" To which Roberts replies, "I'd say you were crazy." End of story. Development? Tension? Nah. You almost hear Woody shrugging and asking for a song.

Of course, Woody would contend that a thin plot's par for the musical course. At the movie's end, D.J. quips, "If they ever make this into a movie, they'd better make it into a musical, or no one would believe it." There's truth in that--a good musical
suspends all disbelief. And though Allen shares with the audiences of the '30s and '40s a similarly ugly reality to escape from, he overlooks the reason those audiences lapped up musicals like chocolate egg creams: talent larger than life.

It's a shame, too, because Allen's approach--to spoof the limousine liberal lifestyle of the Upper East Side through the technicolor lens of Tin Pan Alley-- is promising. And although there are lovely nods to Cole Porter, Groucho Marx's Animal Crackers, and An American in Paris, even musical comedy burlesque doesn't work unless you have actors who can belt. Alan Alda sings a
charming ditty at the drawing room piano, and newcomer Edward Norton, ES '91, is affable enough with his opening number, "Just You, Just Me," but the rest of the actors can barely hold a note, much less hold the stage.

Pauline Kael once praised Barbra Streisand's ability to "extend a character in song, [using it] to complete a role and make it myth." That observation has never seemed more apropos than here, where the songs don't just fail to advance the plot, they have the lethal effect of stunting character. That the actors didn't know they were joining a musical when they were cast is not surprising: the fear is written across their faces. What's worse, Allen doesn't compensate for their inexperience, he exacerbates it. Take Barrymore (please), who doesn't even speak until her fourth major appearance in the movie. The camera first catches her in a white terrycloth summer dress from the opposite side of a fountain (terrible camerawork), then ogles her up Madison Avenue as she and Norton window shop among dancing mannequins (terrible idea), and finally settles in for the proverbial night with her as she lip-synchs around her four-poster bed with only a hairbrush and nightie for props (terrible blocking). Even with a real singer, it's a bad idea to introduce a character with a ballad--saps the energy. But not only is Barrymore's not singing an original song, she's not singing.

Thank god for Tim Roth. When his paroled convict strolls into D.J.'s apartment and feels up, in rapid succession, Hahn, Barrymore, and her sixty-year old grandmother, he reminds you how good Allen can be when he has talent at his disposal. Roth injects a shot of Sleeper-style zaniness into the picture when it desperately needs it, and he has the rare quality of making other actors look better as well.

When Allen wobbles, the temptation is to fault his transgressive personal life. But Allen's problem is rather the opposite: complacency. Ever since the fearlessly autobiographical Husbands and Wives, he's become too careful in subject matter, and since Bullets Over Broadway, too sloppy in his execution. Hopefully the success of Roth's convict (and other than the last ten nostalgic minutes of the movie--which include a marvelous dance by the Seine with Hahn--it's the only bright spot in the movie) will be enough to convince Allen that it doesn't matter whether his hero is virtuous or loved, as long as he is hilarious.

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