"Do you want the vowels or the consonants?"

Rating: 7/10 (29 June 2007)

A slightly uneven comedy that in hindsight provides the bridge between Allen's "anything goes so long as it's funny" earlier comedies and the relationship based introspective work beginning with the superb Annie Hall, Love and Death is still very enjoyable. It's one of those films that's hugely quote worthy with a high number of wonderful Allen witticisms ("My room at midnight." "Perfect. Will you be there too?") and a few good visual gags peppered here and there. Despite being hugely different stylistically to Annie Hall you can tell that the two scripts have been written by the same man, though the same can't be said about the direction.
The plot is more obviously comedic than the rambling, cerebral style of Allen's relationship comedies, with Allen's character trying to get away from fighting in the wars and later being forced into the position of having to assassinate Napoleon. Despite being arguably more structured than many of Allen's films, it runs out of steam far more quickly. Certainly the more introspective philosophising occurs here only in fits and starts with the script going more for broad comedy and one-liners; this means that the film lacks the more relaxed and "realistic" direction that Allen would tend to use from the next film onwards. There's nothing of the sense of listening to a bunch of people naturally conversing (one thing I adore about some of Allen's films is his ability to make dialogue between characters sound natural, as if he asked the actors to start having a chat and decided to film them), lending "Love and Death" a greater sense of artificiality. The direction rarely rises above that of "generic comedy". This isn't to say that the film is bad of course - it's very funny, and Allen and Keaton are both absolutely superb in their roles, never putting a foot wrong - but it's certainly not Allen at his best (though probably remains more accessible than his best movies). Fortunately, a "quite good" film for Woody Allen is still way better than most other comedies.
It's certainly no Annie Hall or Hannah and Her Sisters, but Love and Death is an amusing 80 minutes of fun with several of the flashes of genius that Woody Allen would display more wholesomely and effectively in future works.