`Take the Money and Run' is the very first movie where Woody Allen is writer, director, and star, and true to the first film in any artist's series of work, it may be the his best up to `Annie Hall', his seventh film as writer/director/star and arguably his very best comedy. `Love and Death' and `Bananas' may a little weak. `Play It Again, Sam' has the first writing and direction where the audience develops some empathy with the characters, so it presages the more serious business of the later films. But `Take the Money and Run' is simply nonstop silliness, with some of the longest and best running gags this side of Mel Brooks.