I’d say form trumps style all the way in this one. Allen’s “stream-of-conscious” approach here is as audacious as it is inevitable given its ambitious scope; it is the only way a work as thematically rich and substantial could possibly have been conveyed. “Annie” is at once warm, funny, wise and bleak (though certainly not as dark as later works). In other words, it is thoroughly human and elicits a delicate balance of emotional and intellectual responses.