Everyone Says I Love You 

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Woody Allen's love of the classic movie musical has always belied his filmmaking; his usual hyper-intellectual New York banter is about as far from "The Road to Zanzibar" as you can get. Nonetheless, his new outing, "Everyone Says I Love You," is a wonderful mixture of both, combining the minutae-addled realism of his earlier stuff with the happy-faced bombast of a musical theater production. Most of the actors can't really sing, but it doesn't matter: Edward Norton is still wonderful as a nebbish lover and Alan Alda still commands the screen as a Manhattan family patriarch—even when they're both warbling. Everyone in the huge ensemble cast gets a great moment in before the film's most beautiful sequence, a dance scene with Goldie Hawn and Woody Allen that is truly magical. The movie as a whole is a mess, and must be believed in from the first second to keep your cynicism at bay, but it's worth the effort. With Drew Barrymore, Lukas Haas, Gaby Hoffman, Natasha Lyonne, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Tim Roth and a sweet moment with UNC's own Billy Crudup.

—Ian Williams

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