Sleeper (1973)
Directed by Woody Allen
Miles Monroe, a clarinet-playing health food store proprietor, is revived out of cryostasis 200 years into a future world in order to help rebels fight an oppressive government regime.
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What critics compared Sleeper to
The results carry the comic charge of that sublime moment in Woody Allen’s Sleeper when he finds a 200-year-old VW bug in a cave and it starts right up.
Or better yet, “Sleeper,” in which Woody Allen summed up “Equals” in a single line when asked what he believes in: “Sex and death, two things that come once in a lifetime, but at least after death you’re not nauseous.”
Inspired by Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” it stars Luke Wilson (a much more tolerable actor than his more famous brother Owen) as Private Joe Bauers, who is a guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program.
In fairness, Her has humour – including a double date on Catalina Island with Theodore, Samantha and a fully human couple that could have come out of Woody Allen’s Sleeper.
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It's still a remarkable film, gloriously ropey in places (those taxi cabs are like something out of Woody Allen's Sleeper) yet brilliant in others, with its synth score and lines such as: "If I'm not me, then who am I?" It's a blockbuster from another era, when a big idea, rather than a pair of 3D goggles, gave the film its extra dimension.
The man has the ability to channel surrealism and fantasy with films like “Zelig” and “Sleeper,” and thankfully “Midnight in Paris” is a return to form.
Whether you prefer the “early, funny ones” like “Sleeper” or his romantic comedies like “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,” or his later serious comedies like “Hannah And Her Sisters” and “Crimes And Misdemeanors,” the new Woody Allen film was something to be anticipated.
Anyway, back on topic: I've never been a big fan of Woody Allen's work, although some of his earlier movies (Sleeper, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex) had some really good bits.
But don’t expect the old serio-comic-romantic Woody of Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), or the primitively antic Woody of Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973).
Woody Allen built his reputation on breezy, unstructured comedies that served as little more than excuses to place his trademarked hyper-neurotic nebbish in a series of incongruous environments ranging from 19th century Russia ( Love and Death ) to a dystopian future ( Sleeper ).
Co-written with Marshall Brickman (who was a better team in creating Sleeper than Mickey Rose was in collaboration with Bananas), this is Allen�s most mellifluous, fervent dialogue with each line pierced and tinged with biting hilarity (�Years ago I wrote a short story about my mother called �The Castrating Zionist,�� or �I could tell by your voice, it was very authoritative�like the pope or the computer in 2001,� or �I internalize things�I can�t explain it, I grow a tumor instead,� or �You think you�re God�/ �I gotta model myself after someone�), and throughout the whole running-time, it never loses its grasp.
It's not as serious as Crimes and Misdemeanors or Husbands and Wives, nor is it as openly fatuous as Sleeper or Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask.
Sleeper belongs to Allen's pre-Annie Hall movie output when he relied heavier on pure slapstick and one-liners to elicit laughs from his audiences.
The film is early Allen, which is to say that the director is in a far more loose and playful mood than the movies that would come after his Academy Award-winning "Annie Hall."
Woody Allen ("Annie Hall"/"Take the Money and Run"/"Zelig") loads up his futuristic sci-fi comedy with slapstick, sight gags, Mack Sennett-inspired chases and one-liners.
Around the time Annie Hall was made, Allen was transitioning from broad, slapstick-heavy spoofs such as Sleeper and Bananas toward more personal, introspective comedies and dramas.
The comic level of Annie Hall is not as high or frantic as in Allen's Sleeper or Love and Death.
After skewing Russian literature (Love and Death), political leaders (Bananas), and future nostalgia (Sleeper) in broad comedies, it was as if Woody said, “Okay, you’ve seen that I can be funny, now it’s time to get to know me a little bit.”
…as if one awoke (like a Sleeper) to older villains.
The strengths of 'Downsizing' echo some of the Borscht Belt gags of Woody Allen’s wryly anti-future 'Sleeper'…
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It’s like Woody Allen’s Sleeper without the high energy.