Musicals? Musicals are all about songs. And dancing. Singing and dancing, and the dishwater-dull script that cements the two. Voila, a musical. Something people flocked to in the past and now...well, now we have Evita. So when Woody Allen announces that his next will be exactly that, flags are hoisted and barricades manned. Which is a pity because, against all odds, the little man's rather pulled it off.

In point of fact, the film really isn't half as musical as you might come expecting. Yes, people sing, yes, they break into bouts of spontaneous hoofing when the mood takes, and, no, no one notices. But full-scale routines are rare, and by no means does everyone carry a full tune. And since Allen is banging out the screenplay, you can be sure at least that the cement is, for once, champion grade.

The film does, however, occasionally have the feel of a Greatest Hits: the year-long family-saga and Allen himself are straight out of Hannah and Her Sisters; the overheard psychiatric consultations directly lifted off of his best behaved 'Bergman', Another Woman; and the vicious (but no less funny) stereotyping of Mighty Aphrodite rears an ugly head again in the not inconsiderable shape of Tim Roth. As such, without some top one-liners and the sweetly incompetent (and that's a compliment) musical interludes, this would be pretty thin gruel.

Edward Norton and Drew Barrymore are young lovers on New York's Upper East Side. Step-daddy (Alan Alda) is a liberal, mother (Goldie Hawn) a guilty liberal who campaigns to get convicted Brit-thug Roth out of gaol. Brother Lukas Haas is the black sheep -- an unreconstructed Republican. Allen is the ex-husband breathlessly chasing Juila Roberts around Venice.

For British viewers especially this has more than a whiff of Dennis Potter, not least in the big hospital number. There lip-synched old tunes were painstakingly chosen to comment on and even drive the narrative; here they are as superficial as cake-frosting (hey, it's America), often handled with more zing than prowess by the large cast. Allen's a mumbler, Roth a bumbler, and Norton makes it through on sheer enthusiasm alone. Only Drew Barrymore was dubbed.

But that slight naffness is what in the end endears. For its sins this picture has no plot to speak of, and gets therefore to stand or fall on incidentals alone. The songs are spirited, the gags as good as ever, and Allen again indulges his increasing fondness for having young actors stump up nervy impressions of their director. Remember John Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway? Well, Norton's full-blown restaurant routine -- Barrymore has swallowed their $8,000 engagement ring -- is textbook.

Maybe it's all part of a masterplan, to replace himself with expert Allen clones when he's either too infirm or too embarrassed to be seen still romantically pursuing actresses a third his age. The singers may change, then, but the song, thank God, remains the same.