"Everybody Does It" (perish the name) is supposed to be an hilariously funny movie. Nunnally Johnson, who wrote the script, carefully avoided all opportunities for other than comic effects. This singleness of purpose makes it easy for the reviewer to pass judgment--the movie is not funny, hence it is worthless.

The producers of this movie obviously had their eyes on the hugely successful Linda Darnell-Paul Douglas section of "A Letter to Three Wives." But where the prototype gave the actors a chance to achieve high comedy in a highly original situation, the follow up is perfunctory, routine, and yields few laughs even to such an accomplished team.

The story is about a music-hating man (Douglas) married to a would-be concert soprano (Celeste Holm). All is dandy until she begins a singing career. In Douglas' hour of agony, who should happen along but a famous opera star (Miss Darnell) who discovers that he has a great voice, and persuades him to regain control of the family by singing in concerts and opera himself.

The vague air of triangle is developed in the obvious ways. The singing is exploited by an interminable series of shots in which Douglas cracks various glass objects with his baritone fortissimo, and the final scene when he breaks up an opera by getting drunk on potions designed to calm him down before his entrance. This latter episode gets its effect by his drunken degradation--a type of humor that is not attractive. Finally there are several subplots to bolster the obvious inadequacies of the main story: Douglas is the proprietor of a failing wreckage business; his father-in-law had the same problem with his wife's singing, etc.

The movie is, in effect, a series of gag situation. While this may be all right for the Marx Brothers, who work on the saturation principle, it is not all right here where the material is so thin.