Funny.

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2015)

Woody Allen wrote and directed this, one of his two most amusing comedies. Not funny/serious, like "Annie Hall," which may be his best film ever, but at times hilarious.
Allen and Diane Keaton, who plays his distant cousin, are Russians during the Napoleonic era. The climax is their attempt to assassinate Napoleon after he captures Moscow.
The plot is ridiculous and encompasses the war, the tangled love affairs, duels, the tendency in Russian novels towards philosophizing and brooding about God, the distinction between aristocrats and serfs. It borrows heavily from Dostoyevsky and especially Tolstoy's "War and Peace." Its cinematic touchstones are Sergei Eisenstein and Ingmar Bergman -- some shots parody exactly the images from both.
There are too many jokes to list, and it would be a bad idea to even think about it. I'll direct the viewer's attention to two.
(1) Allen and Keaton attempt to knock out the Ambassador from Spain by hitting him over the head with a wine bottle. The Ambassador is alerted at the last moment. What follows is a speeded-up silent comedy shtick in which Allen and Keaton try to convince the Ambassador that it was just a game. The illustrate the game by hitting each other over the head with the bottle and laughing as they do so. No music, just a CLUNK each time the bottle lands on somebody's head.
(2) Allen is about to be executed but receives a message from God that the Emperor will spare him at the last moment. This sends him into an epiphany in which he looks heavenward and recites a soliloquy about the meaning of life and the prophecies from the Bible. He's carrying on with banalities about how the wicked man will be delivered into the hands of his enemies. The spotlight on him is extinguished but he adds quickly, "Wait, not yet! I'm not done with the wicked man." It skewers a number of sacred cows, God and the belief in an afterlife among them.
Some of the wisecracks fall a little flat but there are scenes and set pieces that lift it far above most comedies of the decade. He flirts with the paramour of a marksman and is challenged to a duel. The challenge should be to the viewer: Try not to laugh.