A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Excellent but underrated film

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Every now and then for the last couple of decades I have taken the occasional look at a Woody Allen film (with as open a mind as I can muster) in an attempt to work out what it is that people seem to adore about him so much. Having just read an extended magazine interview with the man in which he came over as a genuinely likeable human being I thought I was in a good place to have another go at finding what 'it' is.Whatever it is I didn't see it here. You would have thought with a title like 'A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy' there would have been some sex or comedy in it. Apart from one throwaway line line delivered near the end of the thing which was genuinely funny - more for the delivery rather than the content - the film didn't raise a smile! And the sex was endless talk about off- screen activity and a couple of 'humorous' on-screen sub Benny Hill fumbles.I remember hearing an interview with Jack Lemmon, many years ago, in which he said that when Billy Wilder was directing him in a scene in 'Some Like it Hot' Wilder gave him a pair of maracas to hold, and told him to shake them after Tony Curtis said his line and stop before he delivered his own. Lemmon was perplexed. The scene's dialogue was a snappy and rapidfire to and fro interchange. The maraca shaking would slow it down to a crawl. But Wilder was the director and Lemmon did what he was told. When Lemmon saw the film with an audience he understood. Curtis' s line were funny. So were Lemmons'. If Lemmon had come in with his line as soon as his actor's instincts told him to, the audience would not have heard it because they were still laughing at Curtis's previous line. His line would have been lost. Curtis's next line would make no sense... and the scene would have collapsed like a house of cards. Wilder knew where the laughs were and built space into his direction to let the audience enjoy them. Allen doesn't leave any space for the audience. We're not given any space to get the' jokes' (such as they are) because there's always someone talking straight after them. What they are saying is usually inane piffle and by the time you've registered that what they are saying is of little consequence and not a zinging comeback (if was generous I could concede that a lot of the inconsequential dialogue here is Allen's carefully crafted, verbal equivalent of maraca shaking) any humour in the 'joke' that just went past has evaporated.The less said about Allen's helpless, "oh look at me,I'm so clumsy" shtick the better.I'll give it a couple of years and have another go and seeing what the Allen cultist adore so much.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) was written and directed by Woody Allen. Allen also stars in his iconic role as a more-or-less decent guy with the ability to say or do the wrong thing in almost any situation. Woody has surrounded himself with talent in this film. Jose Ferrer plays the pompous professor Leopold, and Tony Roberts plays the "fast" doctor Maxwell, who is Allen's best friend. The real clout comes from the female actors: Mia Farrow is Ariel--engaged to Leopold, but maybe in love with Woody, or maybe even with Roberts. Julie Hagerty plays Dulcy, a young but not-so-innocent nurse who has accompanied Maxwell for the weekend. Mary Steenburgen portrays Allen's wife Adrian, who has become frigid for reasons that she knows but we don't.Shakespeare realized the potential of midsummer's night for fantasy and for love, and so did Ingmar Bergman in his film "Smiles of a Summer Night." Allen has never been afraid of taking on a challenge, and he maintains the tradition with a script where almost every man wants almost every woman, and vice-versa. The film is all about love, and all about sex. However, because it's rated PG-13, you know that there won't be any on-screen nudity. Actors talk about sex, they arrange secret meetings and talk about sex some more, but we never see them without multi-layered early-1900's clothing. That's OK--this movie is about the chase, not the consummation.The film contains some beautiful scenery, so it would work marginally better on a large screen, but it was certainly satisfactory on DVD. Incidentally, the soundtrack is composed entirely of music by Felix Mendelssohn. You may not realize that Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream contains a melody we hear all the time. You'll recognize it instantly.

Cute and charming, if not really much more. Gordon Willis's photography is nowhere near as amazing as his earlier collaborations with Woody, and the film doesn't have any wildly funny moments. But the writing is witty, and the acting solid if not triumphant. It just doesn't feel like a Woody Allen film somehow. More like a nice, solid, unassuming French farce. That's not a bad thing, and this film is still better than 99% of what comes out of Hollywood, with a sweeter, more upbeat tone than usual for Allen. It's just coming on the heels of masterpieces like 'Annie Hall', 'Manhattan', and 'Stardust Memories', and just before other great films like 'Zelig' and 'Purple Rose of Cairo', it can't help but pale a bit in comparison.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY was Woody Allen's amusing variation on the Ingmar Bergman classic SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, which had been previously re-worked as a Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim called A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. This film is about three couples in turn of the century who gather at one of their country homes for the weekend and it is clear at the beginning of the story that these three couples are hopelessly mismatched and we see the very human foibles that split up and mix up these three couples during this memorable weekend in the country. Woody and Mary Steenburgen plays the hosts for the weekend, a seemingly happily married couple whose happiness is clearly surface deep. Tony Roberts plays a womanizing physician and Woody's best pal who arrives for the weekend with his nurse (Julia Hagerty). In her first screen pairing with Woody Allen, Mia Farrow plays a former flame of Woody's who has arrived with her much older fiancée (Jose Ferrer) who she is scheduled to marry on Monday. Watching these three couples fuss and fumble all over each other in an attempt to be with the person they really want to be with is what makes this charming period comedy work. As always in Woody's films, music is crucial in setting the mood and Woody has chosen some classic Mendelsohhn pieces that set the perfect mood for the piece. The performances are uniformly fine, with Roberts a standout. Not one of Woody's better known films, but if you'd like to see where his relationship with Mia began, take a look.