Woody Allen spent a lot of time in the 1980s and ’90s trying to make interesting movies without repeating himself. Or at least not repeating himself too badly. When you throw in his love of Gershwin and Porter, there’s no need to be surprised that he made a modern ’30s musical, 1996’s Everyone Says I Love You. Since I’m a known Allen fan, no need to be surprised that I enjoyed this one.
As is often the case, Allen uses an extended family to simplify his need to connect the cast. Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn are the parents, Allen is Hawn’s ex, Natasha Lyonne is the daughter of Allen and Hawn, and Drew Barrymore, Natalie Portman, Lukas Haas, and Gaby Hoffmann play the only other siblings. Barrymore, as the film opens, becomes engaged to Edward Norton but later gets entangled with ex-con Tim Roth; Lyonne travels a bit and has several flings.
Lyonne also has a burning itch to find the perfect woman to match with her father. When they’re vacationing in Venice and bump into Julia Roberts, who’s there with her husband, daughter realizes she knows the stunning beauty, recognizing her as a longtime patient of her friend’s psychiatrist mother (played, uncredited for some reason by Allen regular Dianne Wiest); Roberts, unaware that the girls peep on the mother’s sessions, reveals all her dreams and fantasies and Lyonne instructs Allen for wooing purposes.
Fortunately, I was pretty much able to tune out the musical numbers. I suppose they were fine but, as good as the cast is at acting, they aren’t a song and dance troup of the level of Astaire and Rogers or Sinatra, Kelly and and Ann Miller. Plus this film was made in 1996 and not 50 years earlier and it just didn’t ring true to me. Amusingly Barrymore didn’t do her own vocals but the person who sang for her wasn’t credited onscreen.
recommended for Allen fans
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