Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

SnoopyStyle Psychologist Steffi Dandridge (Goldie Hawn) and lawyer Bob Dandridge (Alan Alda) head a liberal upper class Manhattan family. The extended family includes Steffi's ex Joe Berlin (Woody Allen), their daughter Djuna Berlin (Natasha Lyonne), Skylar (Drew Barrymore), Lane (Gaby Hoffmann), Laura (Natalie Portman), grandpa with dementia and the black sheep Republican son Scott (Lukas Haas). Holden Spence (Edward Norton) is in love with Skylar. Von (Julia Roberts) is one of Steffi's patients. Charles Ferry (Tim Roth) is an ex-con.This is a Woody Allen musical. The music is easy listening and everybody does a good job singing. Some are surprisingly good but the songs aren't terribly challenging. The overwhelming family can be hard to take. I would have preferred some trimming of the family tree. It would have been better to concentrate on one relationship. The effect is a bit scatter shot.

ElMaruecan82 "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing" says the song. Well in Woody Allen's case, love can be described as many-handled theme.Indeed, whether portrayed as an inexhaustible source of intellectual torments, an unreachable holy grail or an emotional dead-end, love has always been in the core of Woody Allen's oeuvre. Even in his zaniest days, Allen featured romantic walks in a bucolic site or deep interactions in a well-chosen spot of New York or any place of the world. The seminal "Take the Money and Run", had a very touching romantic subplot leading to much more magnitude in "Manhattan" and "Hannah of Her Sisters" before being treated in a skeptical and disillusioned way in "Husbands and Wives" from the light of Allen's separation with Mia Farrow.This brief preamble is to show that almost every facet of love has been depicted by Woody Allen. So, with such a title as "Everyone Says I Love You", his twenty-something film, I didn't know how high to put my expectations. I guess Roger Ebert's enthusiastic endorsement made me expect fireworks of emotions, something on the same arousing level as "Manhattan"'s opening sequence …. But what I got was a firecracker. The film is cute, charming, with sweet interactions between enamored characters, but nothing affected me like all the films I mentioned. Even the parts set in Venice and Paris, instead of enhancing the romance, irritated me with their superficial postcard quality.I understand that superficiality was intended to embody the lightheartedness and spontaneity of these characters struck by Cupid's arrow. I understand Allen didn't plan to preach or speak philosophical statements about love, but just let the hearts express through spontaneous outbursts of singing and dancing. But this is where we come to the main flaw, which alas is the reason-to-be of the film: the music. I enjoyed the hospital sequence, the part where a bunch of ghosts from beyond the grave give the living some precious advice, and the surrealistic climax in Paris where Goldie Hawn, in a superbly executed sequence started floating in the air. But the rest of the music didn't touch me, and my heart is not made of stone.I've got to hand it though to Woody for the risk he took by letting the actors perform with their own voice, it startles in the beginning but we quickly get used to it. When the film opened with young Holden (Edward Norton) sining his love to Skylar, an upper-class girl of Manhattan (Drew Barrymore), I respected Allen's audacity for materializing this idea that we all sing when we're happy and how we sing hardly matters. But how greater would the surprise have been if the songs were really catchy and didn't seem randomly perturb the narrative structure. Maybe there weren't many musicals at that time so the film had a fresh quality but the soundtrack was not the highlight, which is saying a lot for a musical.A good point was the titular "Everyone", which relied on a great ensemble. There is Goldie Hawn as Steffi, the guilty-ridden rich mother and Alan Alda as Bob, her husband, both the best friends of the neurotic Joe, Steffi-ex-husband, contemplating suicide after many failed romances and played by you-know-who. There is also a scene-stealing performance from Natasha Lyonne, as Steffi and Joe's daughter DJ, trying to get her father in touch with Von, Julia Roberts, a therapist whom she happens to know all her secrets and fantasies. There were also fine performances from Lukas Haas as the Republican son (the reasons of his political orientation was the kind of comedy gold the film needed in more quantity) and last, but not least, Tim Roth made a believable released prison mate falling in love with Skylar and causing her to breakup.The film had the same potential than "Hannah and Her Sisters", but I was disappointed by the easy ways Allen chose to close his characters' arcs. The kind of emotionality provided by Dianne Weist' last line from "Hannah" was totally missing, which can be forgivable since it's a comedy, but the wit was frustratingly inexistent and only confined to some predictable gags such as a wedding ring, hidden in a cake and getting swallowed by the future bride. This also would have been forgettable if it wasn't for the central romance between Woody Allen and Julia Roberts. We know it's doomed from the beginning, because of the whole plotting, they had to break up so Joe would finally realize he's still in love with Steffi and can enjoy such good moments like a Groucho Marx party in Paris, one of these things that makes life worth living. But his separation was nowhere close to the level of poignancy or comedy reached by "Manhattan".Just like Skylar who breaks up with Holden to eventually reconcile, Joe cheats with Von, she goes with him, until realizing that having fulfilled her fantasy of living with the perfect man, she's got nothing much to fantasize about, it was cynically anticlimactic, and convincing, but for a film that pretends to be a comedy, I expected more, at least, enough to give Julia Roberts a shining moment and not reduce her to the beautiful actress who stars in a Woody Allen film. That also was announcing another Allenian trend when he became Europe's darling, each film raising the big question about his casting. Allen has always been one of my favorite directors, but when he became a 'hip' phenomenon, something of his touch was kind of lost.Now, after watching his interview he gave to a French magazine in the DVD features, I started to look at his film with more indulgence, respecting his desire to make a personal tribute to old-fashioned musicals. But as much as I wanted to love "Everyone Says I Love You", it was nowhere close to Allen's top 10 best films, not even to his next film, "Deconstructing Harry", which I thought was perfect.

The_Movie_Cat There came a point when the trademark opening to Woody Allen movies - plain white text on black backgrounds accompanied by a jazz song - went from classy and charming to twee and self conscious. That point really seemed to hit home around his lacklustre 90s period, largely due to the indifferent quality of most of the product. If your jazz opening is ironic juxtaposition to a genuinely funny film, or a more museful one, then it works. If it presages a mediocre offering with Larry David then it can look a little self congratulatory and pretentious.That feeling extends throughout the whole of Everyone Says I Love You, a film that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be... a genuine musical homage or pastiche. If seeing hospital patients or the ghosts of the dead dancing to show tunes is your thing, then it's ideal. But this kind of humour would work more in the full-on hands of a Mel Brooks, not a nebbish pseudo intellectual. And I say that as a fan of Woody.One thing that surprises is how almost everyone can hold a reasonable note in the cast, even Woody himself, with Hawn and Norton reputedly told to sing worse to make it more realistic. And technically there's no faulting the skill behind this piece, Allen's first picture in over ten years to be shot outside New York. But there's a twee, self-amused feel throughout, something made even worse by the character Allen plays in the film. I'm a huge Woody Allen fan, but I would never claim he has a great number of strings to his acting bow. Here he plays Woody Allen - this time called "Joe Berlin" - as a man who psychologically manipulates Julia Roberts into bed with him. Using spied knowledge of her intimate psychological secrets, Allen says and does the right thing at all time to procure a physical relationship... sorry, but isn't that practically rape?This unsettling subtext to the movie unbalances it still further, a dispiriting turn of events in a film that never seems to know quite what it wants to be. It's nice to see Woody trying something new thirty years into his movie career, but Everyone Says I Love You really needs to be filed under "inessential Allen".

pyrocitor As an incredible affinity with nostalgic populism has been a recurring theme throughout his expansive career, the melding of a 1930s inspired musical and Woody Allen does not seem to be as unorthodox an idea as one might expect. However, in typical form, Allen proves far more interested in pursuing his own whimsical train of thought and interest than pursuing a topic along conventional expectations, opting for a 'musical' more reflexive about the role of the musical as a genre than concentrating on itself as a new entry into the genre. The result, Everyone Says I Love You, subsequently proves to be one of Allen's most silly, experimental, self-indulgent, and yet delightfully enjoyable films.While initial inspection would find criticism in the lacklustre singing and dancing efforts of his primary cast, it becomes clear over time than Allen's film attempts to harness the inspirational impact of the musical and the role it plays within the lives of the general public, particularly as a tool for inner expression. Through intentionally casting 'non-singers' (rumour has it than Allen neglected to inform any of the cast the film was a musical until after they were cast), the film achieves a naturalistic feel, as if providing real people with the sudden opportunity for cathartic song and dance in a way excluded from 'real life', thus exposing them and their inner workings as characters. And it is this methodology that brings the film to life, providing a unique spin on an otherwise familiar Allen narrative of a web of quirky yet credible individuals weaving in and out of each other's lives and relationships, suggesting the fluidity of romance and human nature. However, as always, Allen is less interested in ascribing judgement on his characters as simply observing them in action (although there is an amusingly tongue-in-cheek subplot satirizing the film's young republican character which unwinds in a hilariously contentious fashion). Everyone Says I Love You ends up exploring the inevitability of the contradictions and lapses in judgement of human nature, leaving each new weave of the plot largely bereft of directorial moral guiding and all the more human because of it. Though the title may suggest a comment on the devaluing of emotional excesses regarding love, Allen's film never trivializes or languishes on love, but merely presents it as a universal human concern, his fluffy approach belying a more credibly sweet interior (the film's ending riverside dance sequence stands out as one of the more quiet, poignant and beautiful climaxes in recent cinema). That said, the film at heart remains more of an experimental exploration than firmly quality film, as Allen's script lacks the zing and wit of many of his more assured works, lagging somewhat midway through, and the entire film has a highly cobbled together, incohesive and somewhat amateurish feel (whether or not this fits with Allen's intent at naturalism remains up for debate). In addition, Allen sometimes gets a little too silly for his own good (a song and dance number with ghosts in a funeral home is really pushing it), though he never quite gets carried away enough to lose track of his intent or film as a singular entity.Regardless of what they may lack in vocal credentials, the film's cast certainly excels in terms of performance. Drew Barrymore masters the sweetness, innocence yet unpredictability of a somewhat naïve young woman in love, and Edward Norton is a scream as her thoroughly wholesome yet vaguely self-centred fiancé (their prospective engagement scene in a restaurant, with Norton essaying his best neurotic Allen impression in the midst of growing chaos, is likely the film's most hilarious moment). Allen himself finds an entirely appropriate role for himself without taking over the narrative, toning down his eccentricities for the role of a man attempting to reconstruct his entire life in the image of his prospective lover's ideals, and is fully convincing and lovably pathetic in the process. As said romantic interest, Julia Roberts is left with little material to work with, but channels a fitting sense of grounded yearning nonetheless. Alan Alda is hilarious as the central family's sweetly outspoken patriarch, threatening to steal the show on multiple occasions, Goldie Hawn is somewhat underused yet both witty and touching as his wife (and Allen's ex-wife). Tim Roth steals the show with a far too brief part as an unbalanced, recently released convict, and a young Natalie Portman excels at credibly conveying teenage yearning for love without lapsing into cliché. While an undeniably whimsical entry into the Allen canon, Everyone Says I Love You remains a thought-provoking and thoroughly charming (albeit somewhat clumsy) film easily worth experiencing for those beguiled by musicals as much as musical lovers.-8/10