Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Everyone Says I Love You (1996)

Then For me, the optimum time to watch films is 7:30 in the evening, after dinner but before you’re too tired to concentrate. Just after lunch is ok, though it does leave the pregnant pause between 3pm and dinner time, when if you’re in a city centre, the only thing left to do is navigate the rush hour traffic. The strangest time is the morning, just after breakfast which is when I saw Everyone Says I Love You, a week before release in the old Odeon on London Road with my friend Tris, mainly because, if it’s been a particularly good film, you know that there can’t be many things you’ll be doing for the rest of the day which will quite as entertaining.

Now I usually try to listen to the music of whichever film I’m writing about as I’m tapping away which means I have the soundtrack to Everyone Says I Love You on in the background right now. As with the film, it opens with Ed Norton (Ed Norton!) singing Just You, Just Me and I’m grinning from ear to ear, a Cheshire cat grin and I suspect it wouldn’t require Tim Burton, CGI or glasses to tell that it’s in three dimensions. I just know, that when I should be listening to the new Laura Marling album, this is going to be on repeat. Said soundtrack isn’t on Spotify, but I’ve curated this compilation by way of compensation.

Against prevailing expectations, the 90s was a purple patch; only a director at the top of their game, or with extreme confidence would attempt a musical at this point, especially one which bridges three cities and has such a massive cast. It’s not simply the variety of films Woody was directing, but their quality in terms of writing, star power, originality and visual ingenuity. To fixate, as some critics did at the time, on Woody choosing to have his character romance the most famous actress in Hollywood is missing the point entirely.

Though I like musicals, you’d have to ask Rick Altman or even Emma Brokes as to where Everyone Says I Love You fits within the history of the genre. To this layman, choreographer Graciela Daniele’s dance numbers remind me of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort with their highly co-ordinated seeming naturalism and the approach to song must have influenced Joss Whedon in deciding how to deal with the varying voice talent of the cast in Buffy’s Once More With Feeling.

And not just the singing. Like the Scooby gang, these characters seem well aware that they’re in a musical comedy; Natasha Lyonne says as much in the voice over and there’s the wonderful moment went Goldie Horne admonishes Alan Alda for breaking into song for no readily apparent reason. Unlike the Scoobies they seem very happy with the situation, and why not? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could burst into song on the bus, floating in WH Smiths or in a restaurant without people thinking we’re a bit mental or pissed or both?

Storywise, the strongest thread is Woody’s seduction of Julia Roberts, which is of course the comic version of Another Woman which the director mentioned in the Stig Bjorkman interview, though as in that film he avoids the predictable pay off in having Roberts discovering that her intimate thoughts have been “stolen” and yet still leaving Woody with the moral wreckage of changing his life to accommodate this dream girl, only for her to not be satisfied after all. There’s a reason that dreams are aspirational, otherwise we have nothing to strive for.

Courageously, Julia sings. We can tell it’s her voice because her name appears on the soundtrack listing, as does Norton, Lyonne, Allen, Alan Alda, Tim Roth (Tim Roth!) and Goldie Hawn, who it’s reputed was so good Woody asked her to detune herself so that she fitted his aspiration for the characters to sing like real people. Sadly, that isn’t Drew Barrymore – she balked considering her own voice to be too awful for anyone to hear – and in case you’re wondering why she signed up for this kind of musical in the first place, Woody didn’t tell the actors it was a musical until he had their signatures.

These facts are courtesy of the every accurate Imdb incidentally, which also says that Tracey Ullman and Liv Tyler filmed scenes for this film which were subsequently cut. Imagine: Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Natasha Lyonne, Drew Barrymore, Liv Tyler, Gaby Hoffmann and Goldie Hawn on the same shooting schedule. It’s an intergenerational manic pixie dream girl convention. No wonder Lukas “What ever happened appened to Lukas Haas?” Haas looks so happy to be there and Alan Alda so harassed. Sadly, Kristen Dunst was still on e.r. (having already had her uncredited screen debut as one of Mia’s kids in Oedipus Wrecks), Maggie Gyllenhaal making tv movies and Zooey hadn’t started on films yet so it’s not quite definitive.

In short, the film is magical. I’ve seen criticism from people who don’t like the fact that other than the Allen/Roberts mash-up it doesn’t have a strong storyline but wittingly or otherwise isn’t that just a comment on the fact that some of the best musicals don’t have a strong storyline? Aren’t they a pageant, a series of incidents which sometimes make some narrative sense but not always? Don’t they often include moments like the death of Grandpa which are generally just a prelude for some more song and dance? Frankly if I didn’t have another twenty-odd Woody Allen related films I’d be spending the rest of the year proving it.