My Favorite Woody Allen Film

Ever since I began studying films I have been a Woody Allen fan. He has made some of the best films of his generation and continues to produce quality work every year. Over the past forty years he has made about forty films of varying quality, made on low budgets, have every A list star imaginable, which Allen personally writes, directs, and usually stars in. I have seen over half of them, and at this point have given up on comparing them to other director’s films; instead, I allow them to sit in a vacuum. They are “Woody Allen films”. Sure, films such as Annie Hall and Love and Death are great whether you have seen only one or all of his films, but a lot of his films are a lot better in the context of his larger career. One film stands out in particular to me in the list, and I would go as far as to say it is my favorite Woody Allen film, despite the fact that many would probably disagree.

Everyone Says I Love You, to me, is his best movie. It is Allen’s only musical, although I sincerely wish he would make more. The songs are all from older musicals and are based around Woody Allen’s typical love and death motifs. The film attempts to take itself seriously, within the opening dialogue the fourth wall is broken; instead, the viewer is merely along for a magical ride. It is difficult to watch the film without a big goofy smile, as these complicated characters try to grasp the simplicity of love.
The film benefits from a great cast, stars such as Alan Alda, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore, Goldie Hawn, Tim Roth, a young Edward Norton, a very young Natalie Portman, and Woody Allen himself in a familiar neurotic role. Julia Roberts is at the prime of her sex appeal, and Allen is infamous for using only the most beautiful women. Norton and Alda’s characters are extensions of Allen’s personality – they are opinionated, neurotic, sensitive, and funny. Barrymore is the only character who does not sing in the film, as she claimed that her voice was to bad even to fit in the context of the realistic style Allen was aiming for.
The story centers around an upper class New York family. At the top of the hierarchy is Bob and Steffi Dandridge; Steffi’s former husband, Joe (Allen) is a close friend of both of them and visits frequently. They have a bunch of children together, most notably Skyler, who is proposed to by Holden Spence (Edward Norton) early on the film. Their romance is one of the focus’ in the film. Skyler’s sister, DJ, is our narrator through the film, and when she goes to visit Joe, her father, in Venice, we witness his attempt at wooing Julia Roberts character Von using the information DJ provides from having eavesdropped on Von’s psychiatrist. The Grandfather of the family dies halfway through the film, and at his funeral the ensemble breaks out into “Enjoy Yourself, It’s Later than You Think”. There is a wonderful seen afterwards where Scott Dandridge discovers that his newfound Conservative Republican beliefs are actually caused by an illness he did not know about that causes him to faint. When he wakes up in the hospital, he is deemed healthy and regains his liberal beliefs. The film ends with the entire family attending a Groucho Marx party in Paris, and Joe and Steffi slip off and rekindle their failed romance by dancing in the sky.

Maybe Everyone Says I Love You is not the most profound Woody Allen film, or the most innovative, or the best written, but simply the film that hits the perfect balance between romance and comedy, between humor and philosophy, between New York and Europe, and between love and death. I did not grow up with Woody Allen films; my first Woody Allen movie was Whatever Works, and even though I don’t consider it to be one of his better films I knew immediately I was watching the work of a genius. I don’t have the nostalgia for his seventies or eighties films that my parents generation has, instead I have the benefit of seeing almost his entire career in retrospect, and with that benefit I see Everyone Says I Love You as the best film to define him by.