EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU. Starring Woody Allen, Goldie Hawn. Directed by Woody Allen. Category 2A. Showing at UA Queensway, Times Square and Whampoa.
Like Bullets Over Broadway and Mighty Aphrodite, this is a rather lightweight Woody Allen comedy. And like those two movies, it offers plenty of pleasurable moments in a story which is just a convenient means of hanging these set pieces.
Although it has some big names and features handsome European locations alongside the expected streets of New York, Everyone Says I Love You has the light feel of a personal project skilfully dashed together for the enjoyment of Allen and the cast. All seem to be having a ball, and it is impossible for some of this enthusiasm not to rub off on the audience, even if it does sometimes feel too light for its own good, a 100-minute dinner consisting solely of hors-d'oeuvres.
Everyone Says I Love You is Allen's crack at making a musical in the grand tradition of An American In Paris or Singin' In The Rain. Of course, as the narrator states at the start, it turns out to be no ordinary musical, being suffused with the usual worries and hopes of its creator. Thus we get a whole ensemble of New York characters gently falling in love, falling out of love, thinking about falling in love, and - just to make it clear this is an Allen film - talking about falling in and out of love.
When the cast are not doing any of these things, they tend to be singing and dancing, something which lends an enjoyable old-fashioned touch to the proceedings.
The way musicals play with reality makes them perhaps the most magical of all films and Allen taps into some of that magic here. So while this may not be the wittiest of his films, it certainly possesses a certain amount of happy charm.
Musicals usually have simple stories so they do not interfere with the song and dance, but Allen packs out his script with little affairs to create a typically interlocking story.