I put off watching “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)” (1972) in my Woody Allen viewing project, worried it might be heavy on sex scenes and/or health class scenes. It’s actually neither. Although the subject is sex, it’s goofy, absurd and innocuous like his other Seventies farces. It’s a comfortably tame viewing experience, although the almost total absence of sexiness does seem like a missed opportunity.
It’s not as funny as his best from this period, “Love and Death,” but it’s better than his worst, “Sleeper.” The structure is different: Seven vignettes, averaging 12 minutes.
“EYAWTKASBWATA” is an adaptation of the controversial 1969 analytical book by David Reuben, but that’s only a starting point. Allen parodies the book while “adapting” it. The writer-director-actor takes a clinical-sounding or racy-sounding question (the vignette title) but purposely goes in a ridiculous direction. In his 30s, he’s still in touch with the “giggling in health class” part of his brain.
“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)” (1972)
Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen, based on David Reuben’s book
Stars: Woody Allen, John Carradine, Gene Wilder
Some aspects are notably of the Seventies, like the treatment of rape and pedophilia as perversions on par with “exposing yourself on a subway” – although maybe this is a joke that doesn’t land. Mostly, “EYAWTKASBWATA” is a harmless goofy exercise. I’ll go through the vignettes, from best to worst:
1. “What Happens During Ejaculation?” (7)
The best installment is a little like “Innerspace” and other movies where people get shrunk down and enter a human body, except that the body is portrayed like command rooms at NASA, with communications via intercom and headsets. The highlight is Allen as a sperm, whose fear resembles a military grunt being sent on a likely suicide mission. It’s amusing to see sex symbol Burt Reynolds as a brain control-room worker.
2. “Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?” (6)
Second-best is this “Frankenstein” parody (one year before Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein”). A lot of the humor comes from wonderfully hammy John Carradine as a mad doctor obsessed with proving wrong his colleagues who call him crazy. But he is crazy, as lab visitors Allen and Heather MacRae can see. This installment gets overblown, but I admit the visual is memorable: A giant runaway breast terrorizes the countryside. Also of historical cinematic note is a man screwing a loaf of bread, a progenitor of the centerpiece scene of “American Pie.”
3. “What Is Sodomy?” (2)
The rankings hit a big drop-off in quality, with one-note skits that strive to stay amusing throughout their runtime. This one gets by on the naturally funny Gene Wilder playing it straight as a doctor who falls in love with a sheep. Beastiality hadn’t occurred to the doc until a patient comes to him with this issue; Wilder gives an amusingly long reaction of frozen shock. An undertone of animal abuse keeps this from being riotously funny.
4. “Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching an Orgasm?” (3)
This straightforward installment is not funny on the page – it’s simply about Allen struggling to satisfy partner Louise Lasser (“Bananas”). But Allen cleverly puts the whole episode in Italian (subtitled in English) to add absurdity. Along with his sunglasses, Allen’s character is a suave ladies’ man in public. But his success comes from behind-the-scenes research and trial-and-error.
5. “What Are Sex Perverts?” (5)
This is a “20 Questions”-style game show wherein contestants try to guess the guest’s perversion (He likes to expose himself on the subway). The humor has been wrung out of this skit through the years, since some risqué modern game shows and racy reality shows aren’t far removed from what was a parody 50 years ago.
6. “Do Aphrodisiacs Work?” (1)
This installment opens the film flatly, although Allen deserves credit for successfully writing bad jokes on purpose. He plays a jester whose “comedy” doesn’t please the king. Upon serving the queen a love potion, Allen enters bedroom pratfall territory, but Lynn Redgrave can’t keep up with her co-star in this skill. I couldn’t stop thinking how this premise was done better later: the love spell gone awry in the “Buffy” classic “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and the chastity belt gag in Mel Brooks’ “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”
7. “Are Transvestites Homosexuals?” (4)
This skit has aged the worst because we’re supposed to find a man (Lou Jacobi) dressing up in women’s clothing hilarious in and of itself. When he tries to escape being captured, only to have the whole town trying to help “her” out, it spirals into farcical comedy, but in rote fashion.
It’s faint praise to say “EYAWTKASBWATA” is easy to watch because it’s short, but that is the case. Skits 6 and 7 are a wild ride and a perfect parody, respectively, leaving the viewer with positive feelings. But the other five miss more than they hit, providing more historical curiosity than chuckles.