Hilarious and clever farce

Rating: 9/10 (16 March 2007)

The adventures of Boris Grushenko, a bumbling though well intentioned man and even intelligent man, during the Napoleonic Wars in Russia. From his stint in the army where he single handedly (and accidentally) wins a key battle to attempts at political assassination with all sorts of life's problems thrown in between. The many homages thrown in are just perfect.
Not many comedies out there can be deemed "clever comedies." Most comedies, as with films in other genres, present their content just for the sake of it. Action movies have chases and explosions, horror movies have suspense and gore, and comedies have funny characters and jokes. However, they rarely lead anywhere. Sure they may be funny (or exciting or scary), but they don't very frequently leave the audience thinking or feeling truly delighted days after they've seen them. They just sort of whither away and are completely gone by the time the viewer is ready to watch the next movie on their list. This goes doubly in this age of "American Pie" and teen comedies. And triply when in the past years Hollywood has resorted to parodying itself with titles like "Scary Movie," all 5(6? 7?) of them. This trend that went on to parodying other genres and its latest offering was "Epic Movie." Needless to say it isn't going very far.
Maybe it is time when Hollywood can look back at the wisdom of the ages and then not redo it with fancy new technology, but rather re-imagine it with some new ideas. "Love and Death" is a prime example that the movie industry could use as a spring board for creating a farce out of something other than itself. There were films like "Team America" that were original spoofs, but given the profane content they were as accessible to all as most of Woody Allen's classic farces. Good humor is very possible without profane excess and there should be more of it. --- 9/10
Rated PG for sexual humor