Who payed the critics

A Major Disappointment

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

After spending the entire Christmas holiday in bed with a burning- hot fever,I decided that I would start the year by looking at the loves and deaths of Woody Allen.The plot:Waiting to be put in front of a firing squad, Boris Grushenko starts to look back on his life.Decades earlier:Despite being the smartest member of the family,Boris finds himself being completely ignored,with Boris secret desire to ask his second cousin Sonja being blown to bits,by Sonja's sudden decision to get married.Telling everyone within ear shot that his not suitable to be a solider,Boris is pushed by his family to join the Russian army,in their fight against Napoleon.Whilst he barely has a clue about how to use weapons,Boris finds himself becoming a war here,after he and 13 others are the only soldiers to have survived a war against the French.With her husband having recently died,Sonja decide,that whilst she may never love him,that Boris is someone that she likes,who she will give her hand in marriage to.Getting set to finally settle down,Boris finds his life to become more hectic than ever,when Sonja hatches a plan to assassinate Napoleon.View on the film:Whilst the European-on location filming was such a joyful experience that lead actor/writer/director Woody Allen would not film out of the US again until 1996's Everyone Says I Love You, (with this movie having Allen try and deal with a crew that barely spoke English,everyone (apart from Allen!) getting food poisoning,a falling out with original studio Fox,constant bad weather,Allen and other cast members getting seriously injured,and to top it all off,the negatives to the battle scenes being damaged,which led to them having to be re-shot!)Allen reveals a surprisingly sharp eye for the vast scope of the films battle scenes,with Allen using tightly held shots to show the "sheep" on the battlefield.Along with casting a wide net for the battle scenes,Allen also smashes down the 4th wall with a stylish force,as Allen goes from showing Boris dreams in a minimalist manner,to Boris & Sonja delivering spidery monologues in front of an unsettling stoic camera.Written after Allen had read War & Peace at a rather quick pace, ("It's about Russians!!") the screenplay takes a perfect approach to the satirising of Russian novels,by skilfully mixing jokes designed for those who have read the books, (such as the ending being a riff on Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment)and those who haven't (such as Boris village looking like the dour dead zones featured on the paperback cover of Russian novels.)Along with satirising Russian novels,Allen makes sure to keep the loves & deaths of Boris at the heart of the movie,with Boris upbringing having a whimsical folk charm which is matched by the slap-stick joy of his attempt to kill Napoleone.Running across the battlefield terrified,Woody Allen gives an excellent performance as Boris,with Allen combining his wicked one- liner delivery with a fantastic hapless nature,as Boris finds things to have gone way over his head.Giving the title a touch of beauty,Diane Keaton gives a superb performance as Sonja,with Keaton casting a warmth across Sonja's face,as she slowly falls in love for Boris,whilst Jessica Harper gives an atmospheric performance as Natasha,as each character discovers their love and death.

I can't imagine another director in their prime tackling the Russian mindset, their war and poverty with as much silly and reckless abandon all in the name of comedy without pushing viewers over the edge. Woody pontificates to the audience turning a spiritual ethos on its head and still making some sense while parodying Russian literature while translating the literal into the parlance of our times. Diane Keaton's funniest movie ever. She completely delivers line after line to keep the plot moving while Woody does his nervous comedy routine with music to warm the cossacks! The bits are all very straight forward even if the literature they are mocking is above my pay grade.

Out of all the Woody Allen films I've seen so far, this is the one I can safely say I found hilarious. The comic timing on display is nearly perfect, and the film does a great job of staying unpredictable with the visual gags and constantly moving forward. Allen and Keaton have never been more fun to watch on screen, and they're aided by a strong supporting cast. The writing is extremely clever as well, satirizing Russian literature and making references to such films as "The Seventh Seal" and the works of Sergei Eisenstein. The film doesn't require you to have seen those films to find the references funny, though, and that's due to the brilliant execution. The film also contains Allen's trademark mock-philosophical debates that have been seen in his other films, except this time I found them far more engaging and funny than usual instead of rolling my eyes.The use of music was also clever, especially during the big, epic battle scene, which makes use of the music from Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky"; an excellent touch. That scene also winds up becoming one of the funniest in the entire film. Those who are fans of the likes of Charlie Chaplin and The Marx Brothers will want to check this film out as well since it pays tribute to them. Diane Keaton played her best character in all of Allen's films here, as it's both fully developed and charming. Demonstrating Allen at his most eclectic and creative, it's here that he made perhaps the most entertaining period piece (if you can call it that) of all time. If you haven't seen it yet, I can't recommend it enough. Even if you don't find it as funny as I did, it's likely you'll still be amused by it. As of right now, I'm proclaiming this as Allen's masterpiece. Every element just clicks to form a great, wondrous whole that never ceases to be entertaining or get a laugh out of me.

'Love & Death' was Woody Allen's last film before his 'reinvention' as a more serious film-maker with 'Annie Hall' in 1977, and is an uproarious spoof of classic Russian literature such as 'War & Peace'. It opens with 'Boris' ( Allen ) in a cell awaiting execution. What circumstances brought him to this predicament? The film goes into flashback mode. Boris is in love with 'Sonja' ( Diane Keaton ), his beautiful cousin, but she prefers his brother 'Ivan', whom Boris claims cannot even write his own name in the ground with a stick. He is then caught up in the Napoleonic Wars ( "we kill Frenchmen, they kill Russians, before you know it, its Easter!" ), and against the odds, becomes a hero, seducing a beautiful countess ( Olga Georges-Picot ). He finally marries Sonja, but it is not a happy union, although she manages to make some wonderful dishes out of snow. Sonja then comes up with her grand master plan - the assassination of Napoleon Bonaparte...As with his other films of this period, most of the gags have a strong Marx Brothers flavour, along with anachronisms such as Boris and a gang of cheerleaders suddenly appearing on the battlefield, along with a hot-dog vendor. There is a duelling sequence which one can imagine might have worked for Harpo Marx. Keaton, as ever, is excellent. Her meaningless discussions with Boris over the futility of human existence are priceless. Boris is agnostic; "If only I could see a miracle...if only God would just cough!". My favourite moment is Boris quoting from the Bible: "Yay, I will walk through the valley in the shadow of death...come to think, I will RUN through through the valley in the shadow of death...you get out the valley quicker that way!". 'Love & Death' ends with the sight of Boris and the Grim Reaper dancing through trees. It is easy to see the scene now as symbolically bringing to a close this era of Woody Allen movies. He was smart to make the change when he did as the television show 'Saturday Night Live' was about to unleash a new wave of comedians - such as Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and Dan Ackroyd - who went on to define 80's American film comedy.