Sleeper (1973)
Directed by Woody Allen

Film Review

What is the worst thing that can happen to a chronic neurotic with a yellow streak so long that it almost exceeds the width of the Milky Way?  Woody Allen comes up with the answer in this, by far his funniest and most uproarious comedy, in which he plants his overwrought altar ego in the scariest of futuristic scenarios.  Wrapped in Bacofoil, Allen is revived, like Buck Rogers but with far less dignity, two centuries into his future after a routine medical intervention.  Once he has regained his senses, he finds himself in a pathologically evil police state where it has been scientifically proved that health foods are unhealthy, smoking is good for you, people cannot make love without mechanical assistance, pets come fitted with batteries and the law is enforced by inept flame-throwing policemen who look like a job lot from the Benny Hill Show.  And as if all this isn't scary enough, vegetables are grown to such gigantic proportions that you can actually beat a man insensible with a strawberry!  Oh, brave new world...

It's not the most subtle or intelligent of satires on life in America in the early 1970s but the parallels are there for those who care to look for them.  Allen naturally ends up aligning himself with the counter-culture rebels, although his instinct for self-preservation rather than a deep-seated desire to react against the creeping fascism of the Nixon presidency seems to be his motivating force.  "I'm not really the heroic type. I was beat up by Quakers," he quips upon realising what his scheming resurrectors have in store for him.  Mercilessly parodying Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (1966) (to the point that you can never again take that film seriously) Allen delivers the funniest sci-fi movie ever whilst paying an affectionate tribute to his comedy heroes - Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx, among others.  Having by this time directed just four films, Woody Allen establishes himself as America's greatest living comedy film director.  Sleeper is without doubt one of the funniest films you will ever watch and it's a great sci-fi romp to boot, with Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) lending his vocal support, as the evil computer who is obviously HAL's more psychotic twin brother.

Those familiar with Allen's subsequent films, which sometimes tend to take themselves a little more seriously than is good for them, will be pleasantly surprised by the sheer unbridled lunacy of this early offering in his oeuvre.  Sleeper is nothing less than a non-stop conveyor belt of gags.  Visual comedy interludes worthy of Buster Keaton alternate with less frenetic scenes in which Allen's verbal wit comes to the fore ("I believe that there's an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey.").  A lively jazz score adds to the fun of the piece, serving the role of an improvised piano accompaniment to those old silent classics.  Sleeper is, if anything, a glorious tribute to the golden age of screen comedy, and Allen's surprising penchant for slapstick makes it a fitting homage.  The image of Allen disguised as a robotic servant, complete with trademark spectacles, gives us one of American cinema's most enduring icons, and it is in this guise that the actor is at his funniest, particularly whilst trying to beat an ever-expanding pudding into submission as it threatens to engulf the northern hemisphere.  Not long afterwards, Allen (back to his usual gawky self) manages to win the Miss America beauty contest - it has to be seen to be believed.

Thank goodness that Diane Keaton is on hand to lend a touch of sanity to the proceedings.  And if you believe that you'll believe anything.  Keaton is madder than Allen is some scenes, making profound theological observations one minute ("do you know that God spelled backwards is dog?"), inverting the lifecycle of the butterfly for poetic expediency the next.  It's probably the best comedy double act since Laurel and Hardy, with just a tad more sexual tension and far less in the way of full-on physical abuse (although Allen does force-feed Keaton with a giant stick of celery at one point).  This was the first time that Allen directed Keaton, although they had appeared on stage and screen together in Play It Again, Sam (1972), which Allen had scripted.  The chemistry between the two is pricelesss and it is no wonder that two of Allen's mostly highly thought of films - Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979) - feature these two great performers sparring off each other à la perfection.

In Sleeper, Keaton plays the idiot socialite stooge to Allen's constantly grouching Lazarus ("I don't know what the hell I'm doing here. I'm 237 years old, I should be collecting social security.")  It's not long before the myopic geek and ditsy beauty fall for each other, but whereas Keaton insists they cannot make love without the aid of modern technology (a cute little device called the Orgasmatron), Allen insists on a more hand's on approach.  Not that there's much time for making whoopee.  When the state is out to get you and turn you into a mindless zombie, when impossibly good-looking rebels who ought to be making shampoo commercials adopt you as humanity's saviour and coerce you into thwarting a diabolical plan to re-construct the all-powerful El Presidente from his nose, you just have to kind of go with the flow and make the best of things.  After this wild and wacky adventure, our friend Woody is left contemplating the futility of revolution - "It doesn't matter who's up there - they're all terrible."  Politics, science and religion have all had their day, so what is there left to believe in?  "Sex and death - two things that come once in a lifetime - but at least after death you're not nauseous."  Oddly, Allen left out comedy, and Sleeper is so chockful of this commodity that it should almost come with a government health warning.  You could so easily laugh yourself into a coma, and then where would you be?  Being woken up two hundred years later to wrestle with giant bananas and clone megalomaniac leaders from their salvaged body parts.  Still, it's probably worth it - if only for the close encounter with the Jewish robot tailor.

Film Synopsis

In 1973, Miles Monroe, a jazz musician and proprietor of the Happy Carrot health food store, goes into hospital for routine treatment on an ulcer.  The operation goes wrong and he is cryogenically frozen.  Two hundred years later, Miles is brought back to life by a group of dissident scientists intent on overthrowing the rule of an evil dictator.  Because he lacks a biometric identity, Miles is perfectly suited to evade the state police as he uncovers the purpose behind the top secret Aries Project.  A natural born coward, Miles is reluctant to get involved in a mission that threatens both his life and his brain (his second favourite organ), but he soon has no choice as the authorities mark him out as a dangerous alien.  Disguised as a robotic servant, he goes on the run and ends up in the employ of the society poet Luna Schlosser.  Realising he needs Luna's help, Miles kidnaps her and hides out in the woods.  Aware that she too is now in danger, Luna finally agree to help Miles, but in their search for the Aries Project Miles is captured and given a new identity.  Luna hooks up with a party of handsome rebels and rescues Miles, just in time for them to thwart a fiendish attempt to reconstruct the Leader from the one part of his anatomy that remains after an assassination attempt - mercifully, his nose.  This is one operation that Miles cannot afford to blow...