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.

I thought this was really quite good. Had not seen before as is never really mentioned or advertised. Particularly enjoyed Julie Hagerty's performance. I don't know why she has not been a bigger star and more used in films. Her timing and line delivery is very funny. Jose Ferrer also excellent at his pompous best. Mia farrow and Mary Steenbergen both look lovely in the summer drenched locations, that look like one of Englands Southern Shire Counties! Perhaps not Woody Allens best, but as he apparently 'hates' the country side, some gorgeous scenes filmed by Gordon Willis. I have given this a '7'rating, and would certainly recommend to all.

This movie features shallow characters, mildly amusing shtick, and early 1980s New York acting school pseudo-intellectuals placed back in 1900 for a weak parody of Bergman's "Smiles of Summer Night. " The title, score, and some silly supernatural effects suggest fairies or spirits to add a nod to Shakespeare, but the themes that both Shakespeare and Bergman delineate in their wonderful works are not even remotely touched on by Allen, who turns the magic of sex and love and its attendant pain into...shtick. Allen once admitted that in his lifetime he would never make a film as good as any film Bergman made; at least he knew his limitations. Allen was a comedian working in a post sexual revolution era where sex had to be covered up by jokes and special effects, the way it's been for any mainstream American movie of the past 35 years. This parody of Bergman thinly disguises a love of Bergman, and only serves to highlight the glaring differences in scope between Bergman's film and Allen's film. It follows in a Hollywood and vaudeville comic tradition of mocking the highbrow for the benefit of middlebrow tastes, but is not irreverent or incisive enough to produce real laughs. This may be partly because it's so one-sided, with all of the fantasies and neuroses coming from a male consciousness, whereas Bergman and Shakespeare (not to mention the great farce writers, such as Feydeau), always gave men and women equal representation.

Woody Allen can surprise every once in a while, and Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy was a slight surprise. If I had heard more praise for it then I would've expected whatever, but it seemed to be one of his more "minor" works, something he wrote and directed very quickly in the midst of working on his big project Zelig. Expecting just a simple trifle, maybe along the lines of a Scoop or Manhattan Murder Mytsery, I got something more substantial. It draws upon sources of Bergman (Smiles of a Summer Night, making it Allen's only homage of Bergman that isn't dark and depressing), Shakespeare (for obvious reasons of the title, but also for the magical element), and maybe just something else that sprang out of Allen that I couldn't really tell.It's a comedy about mis-matched lovers, and how over the course of a day and night old wounds are opened, old flames come up, and lust is purged for better or worse. It's Woody Allen as an inventor with wife Mary Steenburgen inviting a philosophy professor (Jose Ferrer) and his to-be wife (Mia Farrow, first Allen movie and one of her best), who Allen's character Andrew used to date once, er twice, er three times. Then there's Julie Hagerty and Tony Robbins, good friends of the hosting couple, and with Robbins feeling some hardcore affection for Farrow, and the marriage between Allen and Steenburgen being in momentary peril (and Ferrer's "one last hurrah" ideal in Hagerty), it becomes like a twister game of affections and immense sexual stimulus.Whether or not this all makes sense is besides the point. Allen isn't out here so much for logic- how could he with laughable old self-flying machines and that weird magic box that springs out spirits into the night- as he is for personalities and using his effortless ear for dialog. Some of this is really funny, and even clever, like the sly joke with the bathtubs filling up with water (and Robbins/Farrow 'falling asleep', or with the near sex scene on top of the stove in the kitchen. So much of Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy tries to deny the whimsy of the setting, but by the end it becomes undeniable. Rarely has infidelity been this much fun, or with such good performances, in a film by this director, and it should be marked as one of his underrated (or maybe not widely seen) piecfes; for the nature montage early on alone, which is like the forest version of the opening of Manhattan, is worth viewing.