Cowardly scholar Boris Grushenko (Allen) has the hots for the beautiful Sonja (Diane Keaton), but cold feet for the Napoleonic Wars. Devastated by news of Sonja's plans to wed a foul-smelling herring merchant, Boris enlists in the army only to return home a penniless hero!
Finally agreeing to marry him, Sonja settles down with poor Boris, to a rich life of philosophy, celibacy and meals of snow. But when the French troops invade Russia and Sonja hatches a zany scheme to assassinate Napoleon, Boris learns, in a hilarious but fatal coup attempt, that God is an underachiever, there are no girls in the afterlife and that the angel of death can't be trusted!
