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They say Woody Allen is not front and centre in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, but don't believe them: Allen's Andrew, a turn-of-the-twentieth-century inventor, is the mechanism that dictates the other characters' clockwork cuckooing. Such dims the capable ensemble cast (Jose Ferrer (a hoot), Tony Roberts, Mia Farrow, Mary Steenburgen, and Julie Hagerty) of this Elizabethan diversion in which three couples spend a weekend in the country swapping partners and debating metaphysics. But the real failed star of the film is its tone: as Alice would later demonstrate, Woody has a rather leaden notion of whimsy--cinematographer Gordon Willis' admittedly expert long takes are all wrong for bedroom farce, and as for the Shakespeare angle, well, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy lacks the crucial sensibility of a guy who believes in faeries. MGM's DVD version features a soft, muted 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that makes the film look more like an early-eighties movie than a period piece. The 2.0 mono mix is unexceptional. (Note: this is that rare Woody film without any jazz on the soundtrack--Mendelssohn compositions underscore A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy's romantic interludes.) A trailer and collectible foldout (Woody, it says, wrote the screenplay in two weeks) fill out the package.-Bill Chambers