Woody does a Shtick-dump.

Rating: 7/10 (29 August 2000)

Woody Allen used a plot-thread from "War & Peace" on which to hang his backlog of jokes. And he never lets up, even when you try to groan your surrender. Even his lampoons of Tolstoy's philosophical passages and Bondarchuk's close-ups fish for laughs.
This was the old Woody at his height. He had maxed his joke-writing career. If you look carefully underneath it all you can see his later self ready to hatch; the self that flew so brilliantly in "Annie Hall" and never quite since. As it is, enjoy this, the last portrait of the artist as a young man.
(Given that it's Woody Allen, I say "artist" with great caution.)