Rating: 
Summary: "He owned a small piece of land..."
Review: You have to love a movie that combines heady arguments about existentialism with a guy hawking hot dogs to the troops during a bloody battle scene ("Get yer red hots!"). The sight gags, one liners, and crazy scenarios come at you so fast and furious that you won't mind the one or two clunkers here and there. Funny, funny stuff, yet kind of touching, too. This is one of the best of the early Allens, and definitely in the top third of all Woody's films. The DVD gives you both a crisp widescreen edition AND a full-screen pan-and-scan print. So, treat yourself to "Love and Death". It's worth picking up just for the village idiot convention, the guy in love with his herring, and seeing Woody go through basic training. The Prokofiev music works just dandy, too.
Rating: 
Summary: "WHEAT!A tremendous amount of WHEAT!"
Review: Woody's best flick of all time. I laughed uncontrollably(much like Boris's father is the opening sequence)throughout. Film is set during the Napoleonic Wars, and Boris(Woody) is drafted into the Russian Army(Scene with the Drill instructor---"GD YOU, YOU LOVE RUSSIA DON'T YOU!")and becomes decorated for heroism, although his heroism was quite inadvertent.This is one of Woody's gag films like SLEEPER or EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX. I mean that it is not a love story in the sense of the word like MANHATTAN OR ANNIE HALL. One of the funniest gimmicks is when Sonja(Keaton)agrees to marry Boris as she knows he will probably be killed in a duel with the lover of a woman he has slept with(Duel scene is also hilarious!)"He missed him, he missed...."You have to watch this hilarious Allen film!Truly, the best ever.
Rating:
Summary: "Welcome, Idiots!"
Review: This is the sign that greets the local village idiot that Boris (Allen) and Sonja (Keaton) befriends when they drop him off at the gate to Minsk, the site of Russia's annual Village Idiots Convention, on their way to assassinate Napoleon. There are just too many hilarious instances to mention in this, my very favorite Woody Allen flick. Allen has made more sophisticated films, but none funnier than this one, a virtual gag tour that goes a long way in explaining vintage Allen's tremendous popularity and depicting his unique style that set him apart from all other comic writers of that period. When Boris finally marries the woman he has loved all his life (through a regretful miscalculation on Sonja's part), and attempts to consummate his marriage in his wedding bed, Sonja rejects him with a simple, "No, not here." When a lusty baroness asks reluctant war-hero Boris about the source of his love-making expertise after a wild minute of passion, he replies, "I practice a lot when I'm alone". This is pure, unadulterated, prime-cut Woody Allen, and no fan should miss it.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe Allen's best comedy
Review: I saw »Love And Death« on telly (too) many years ago, and then it was suddenly shown in our local "cult" cinema. As a big Woody Allen fan, I rushed to see it.And it was much better than I remembered! 98% comedy - and clearly the best of Allen's early movies which were basicly all comedies. Maybe even his best comedy ever. The parodic element plays a vital role in »Love And Death«. Parody on Russian cultural personalities, on Frenchmen, on religion, on great film makers, etc. Woody Allen has really had a great time and great fun, much of it probably spontaneously, writing this one. A delight for Woody Allen fans - and a great, great laugh for everyone!
Rating:
Summary: "I love him like a brother, just not one of mine."
Review: My favorite Woody Allen movie. A wonderful mixture of high-brow wit and low-brow slapstick, almost Pythonesque in its approach to historical comedy. So many great lines and great moments. If you like clever humor, you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Comedy Writer Actually Pops a Gut Over This One!
Review: At the time, I was an aspiring comedy writer, later to become a professional one. Comedy writers have this thing about humor; we look at the most hilarious of situations or jokes and simply, even stoicly, rave about it with with a simple yet genuine "That's VERY funny." No guffaws. No howls. No sniggers. I'm not proud of this; it just IS. Yet, as I sat in the Beekman Theatre in NYC watching this on opening day back in '74, I watched the scene with Berjikov, the village idiot, from the floor of the theatre, tears streaming down my face, other bodily liquids streaming wherever gravity takes such things. When I got back into my seat, my abdomen was killing me. At first, I thought it was my buddy who, embarrassed beyond belief, shoved his Thom McCann platform shoes into me. But that was to my face. It was then I realized I had actually pulled a muscle laughing so hard at this film. (I later caused the same response from my parents after I told them I was going into comedy writing but, hey, that's THEIR review.) Please, please, please see this one. There. I said it. Now, we can digest our food.
Rating:
Summary: Quinessential Allen -- definitely his best!
Review: Who else besides Woody Allen could make death, war and adultery hilarious? Who else could combine slapstick with philosophical humor and actually pull it off? This movie is hysterical! It's much lesser known than "Annie Hall" or "Hannah and Her Sisters", but it's a truly funny, crazy and smart film.
Rating:
Summary: annie's great, manhattan's greater, bananas is hilariousBUT
Review: this is allen's best, plain and simple. This is what that those aliens in "Stardust Memories" were talking about when they lamented that Allen doesn't make funny movies anymore. It's so funny on every different level. And so entertaining. It's perfectly paced. I've seen it over and over and over and it never gets tired. I've shown all of my friends and girlfriends and even the very most gentile like it. When the black drill sargeant comes out and asks Boris rhetorically, "You DO love Russia, don't you?," cinema reaches one its highest peaks.
Rating:
Summary: No, You Must Be Don Fransisco's Sister
Review: Woody's funniest and best, and one of the top five funniest films I have ever seen. Endless one liners. I must have seen this one fifty time, and it never gets old.
Rating:
Summary: Tied for third-best Woody Allen movie
Review: This is one of the funniest movie of all time! I would rank it with "Hannah and Her Sisters", right behind "Annie Hall" (the movie it preceded chronologically) and "Manhattan" in the Allen pantheon. All fans of comedy, not just Woody aficionados, MUST see this film.
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