Seven sketches of varying quality (1972), “based on” questions from the onetime best-seller by Dr. David Reuben. Woody Allen has always been a short-distance runner, better with individual sequences than overall structure, which might make you think that the blackout format here would play to his strengths. Unfortunately, it merely exaggerates them, as the film gets stalled for minutes at a time on misconceived ideas and too-heavy applications of style; it takes a while for the genuinely funny parts to recover from the total misfires. Allen himself appears in four sketches; the others star Lynn Redgrave, Louise Lasser, Tony Randall, Burt Reynolds, and Gene Wilder.