Synopsis
A nutty inventor, his frustrated wife, a philosopher cousin, his much younger fiancée, a randy doctor, and a free-thinking nurse spend a summer weekend in and around a stunning - and possibly magical - country house.
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Cast
- Woody AllenAndrew
- Mia FarrowAriel
- José FerrerLeopold
- Julie HagertyDulcy
- Tony RobertsMaxwell
- Mary SteenburgenAdrian
- Adam RedfieldStudent Foxx
- Moishe RosenfeldMr. Hayes
- Timothy JenkinsMr. Thomson
- Michael HigginsReynolds
Recommendations
- 75
Miami Herald
Woody Allen's new movie, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, will not make you cry, as Annie Hall and Manhattan were capable of, and it won't make you cringe, as Stardust Memories almost demanded. It is not screamingly funny, romantically piquant, bitter or even, in most ways, unusual. With the exception of a single recurring image--that of Allen as an amateur inventor of the early 20th Century, flapping about in various homemade flying machines--there is not even anything of the absurd in this film. It's just an engaging Woody Allen movie, in which much of the humor is familiar and the tone is as moistly appealing as the title suggests. [18 July 1982, p.L3] - 70
Variety
Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is a pleasant disappointment, pleasant because he gets all the laughs he goes for in a visually charming, sweetly paced picture, a disappointment because he doesn’t go for more. - 60
Empire
Not Woody Allen at his best, this period piece has some clever writing but is not completely convincing. - 60
Time Out London
Allen's version of Smiles of a Summer Night keeps the period country house setting but reduces the characters to six: two medical swingers, an elderly academic and his much younger fiancée, and a long-married couple whose sex-life has ground to a halt. His best invention remains his own screen persona, and the Bergman borrowings here provide it with a warm, romantic and old-fashioned setting. - 60
Washington Post
It's not Allen's best film, but fans of the Woodman should not resist. Whether it's the future of Sleeper or the turn-of-the- century of Sex Comedy, Allen plays the same character -- always bewildered, always sex-obsessed, always under-consummated. [23 July 1982, p.11] - 50
Chicago Sun-Times
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is so low-key, so sweet and offhand and slight, there are times when it hardly even seems happy to be a movie. - 50
The New York Times
Its light classical manner and its happyish ending. Whatever Mr. Allen is doing in constructing this pretty, slight, gently entertaining movie, he isn't doing the thing he does best. A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy gives the impression of someone speaking fluently but formally in a language not his own. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
Woody Allen is among a very few people in the history of film who have provided audiences with really intelligent humor. But even Homer nods, and never has Allen more obviously fallen down on the job than in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, a trifle that owes much to Ingmar Bergman in style and to Groucho Marx in content.
