Mysteries Of The Universe According To Woody Allen

Rating: 8/10 (25 April 2011)

love, life, God, death. what does it all mean? i suppose you could always ask Woody Allen, he seems to have the whole thing figured out. at least as well as anyone.
his personal life aside, i really love Woody Allen films. no comments about how he messed up Mia Farrow and some fans that believed him to know and see all. in his personal life he's a schmuck, as a film maker he's got it all together. at least concerning his early films he does.
my favorite Allen film is 'Sleeper'. but i've seen all of his early work and those films never fail to leave me in stitches.
'Sleeper' may be his best, but 'Love and Death' could very well be his most profound. after all, it does deal with theological questions and tries to answer them with some surprisingly serious conviction. the film manages to go deep into serious questions without ever losing it's sense of fun and humor.
some Christians might take some of this to task. as a Christian myself i really don't sit around wondering whether there is a God or not. but i'll have to say concerning some of these questions of purpose, i still am interested in the answers. Allen gets awfully silly about much of this, but his philosophical conclusions aren't any worse than the pontifications of a lot of great men. but i'm always a little skeptical and hard to please in this category, so irreverence works for me as much as anything.
this is really good film making and great farce. the use of the film score from 'Alexander Nevsky' was a hoot. Allen is also very right. we should never take the "serious" things in life too "seriously". maybe not even death.