Sleeper
Tags: comedy, psychedelic, satire, brainwashing, entertaining, sci-fi

Plot synopsis:
Miles Monroe, a jazz musician and owner of the Happy Carrot Health-Food store living in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, NY in 1973, is cryogenically frozen without his consent, and not revived for 200 years. The scientists who revive him are members of an underground movement: 22nd-century America seems to be a police state ruled by a dictator, about to implement a secret plan known as the "Aires Project" (sic). The underground movement hopes to use Miles as a spy to infiltrate the Aires Project, because he is the only member of this society without a known biometric identity.The authorities catch onto the scientists' project, and arrest them; Miles escapes by disguising himself as a robot. He goes to work as a butler in the house of socialite Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton). When Luna decides to have her "robot"'s head replaced with something more "aesthetically pleasing," Miles has no choice but to reveal his true identity to her. Luna is shocked, frightened, and threatens to turn Miles in to the authorities. In response, he kidnaps her and goes on the run, searching for the Aires Project.Miles and Luna start to fall in love, but Miles is captured and forced to undergo brainwashing. He forgets that he comes from 1973, and becomes a complacent member of futuristic society. Meanwhile, Luna finds a group of commando-rebels and joins the underground movement. The rebels kidnap Miles and force him to undergo reverse-brainwashing, whereupon he remembers his past and joins their efforts.Miles and Luna successfully infiltrate the Aires Project: they learn that the Leader was killed by a rebel bomb ten months previously, and all that survives is his nose. The nose has been kept alive, and the members of the Aires Project, mistaking Miles and Luna for doctors, want them to clone the leader from this single remaining part. Instead, Miles steals the nose and "assassinates" it by squashing it under a steamroller.(Source: Wikipedia)

Review: A futuristic comedy from Woody Allen in 1973 has him waking up from an operation 200 years later (in 2173) to find society has gone berserk.Clever, witty, and very funny.
Allen is hysterically funny as the "sleeper" who gets to give history lessons on the 1970s, pose as a robot, and become a revolutionary to be near Diane Keaton.Filled with sight gags galore and great one-liners.
No matter how different things are in the future, his perspective doesn't change, his wry sense of humor stays the same, happily misplaced ragtime music plays over the movie, and old-fashioned sight gags are employed complete with the occasional stepped-up film speed.Allen has always done well playing virtually the same character in all of his movies, but his talent as an on screen comedian is milestoned in this performance.
There is also a great amount of intellectualism and cultural knowledge in even the zaniest of humorous moments in Sleeper, and that is what makes it one of Woody Allen's funniest films and a work of true comic genius..
Before he became a "serious" filmmaker and gained the respect and admiration of film critics, Woody Allen was already entertaining millions of fans with such unashamedly silly comedies as 1973's 'Sleeper.' The science-fiction story concerns an unfortunate Miles Monroe (Allen), the 1970s owner of the Happy Carrot health-food store, who goes into St. Vincent's Hospital for a routine peptic ulcer operation and wakes up 200 years later in a terrifying police state.
Along the way, Miles enlists the help of the neurotic and exuberant Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton, who collaborated with Allen on multiple occasions, most notably in 'Annie Hall (1977)' and 'Manhattan (1979)').A chaotic blend of razor-sharp satire and slapstick humour, 'Sleeper' contains enough of Allen's and co-writer Marshall Brickmann's trademark wit to remind us of what makes their later collaborations so brilliant.
For example, yes, Howard Cosell's sporting reports were used as punishment for criminals who had committed a crime against the state!The promotional posters for the film proclaimed: "Woody Allen Takes A Nostalgic Look At The Future." This, more than likely, refers to the style of comedy, which, aside from Allen's witty observations, very much evokes memories of the silent slapstick comedies of Lloyd, Keaton and Chaplin.
In this early comedy, Woody Allen plays Miles Monroe, a twentieth century healthfood restaurant owner and jazz clarinettist who is cryogenically frozen after surgery and awoken two centuries later.
Although I normally think of Woody as a master of verbal wit, much of the humour in "Sleeper" is physical slapstick, based upon (and no doubt deliberate homage to) the comedians of the silent era such as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
The combination of a futuristic theme with a traditional style of comedy is doubtless why the film was advertised under the slogan "Woody Allen takes a nostalgic look at the future".This is not, however, simply a pastiche of silent humour like the one Mel Brooks was to attempt a few years later in "Silent Movie".
Besides the funny farcical scenes, Allen gets to perform his classic neurotic worrying routine that works fine and will amuse fans of his on-screen persona.A very notable aspect of the film is its visual style: the sets and props all look excellent.
Be it an orgasm-machine or nonsensical poetry, they seem to suggest we are moving towards times where ignorance revels and empty pleasure-hunting is celebrated as the only correct form of bliss; it can be said that the underlying themes of Sleeper are not unlike those of Aldous Huxley's classic novel Brave New World.Social commentary aside, Sleeper is also a very funny comedy that appeals not only to friends of Allen's neurotic shtick but also to slapstick fans and admirers of creative production design.
Slapstick combined with razor sharp dialogue.The film is pure magic, its my favourite comedy and I think it is in my top three Allen films of all time.See it if you like the Marx brothers, Woody is all of them rolled into one in this film, it's utter genius.
Perhaps taking a cue from a couple vignettes from his previous film, Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask, Allen develops an exploration of an "other" world, notably the future, and brings us into it using his protagonist character, Miles Monroe.Like Bananas, Sleeper has a bit of a rambling quality to it, almost seeming to haphazardly wander from one incident to the next incident.
A frothy cocktail of sometimes surreal, sometimes slapstick humour, the latter in particular accentuated by Allen's own perky Dixie jazz soundtrack.The gags roll (mostly) merrily along and besides Allen's usual foibles on sex and Jewishness, slipping occasionally, as he often did in his earlier work, to sexism, he still lands a good number of bulls-eyes, nailing life in Beverly Hills and even outing yet-to-be-disgraced Tricky Dicky Nixon before his soon-come Watergate Waterloo.Diane Keaton gets to amply demonstrate her kookiness but also shows her worth in some fast-patter exchanges with Allen.
The imagination of the script gives plenty of room for Allen's surreal humour - the orgasmatronic booths are good and the robot scene allows him to pay a slight homage to Keaton.Overall this is yet another example of an `early, funnier' Woody Allen film.
He soon finds out that the world is a dystopian society ruled by a single leader, where people have robot servants, get pleasure from a machine called the "orgasmatron" and the totalitarian police capture anyone suspect of being an alien and wipe their memory.Along the way of trying to defeat this evil plan, he runs into a self-important poet, Luna, played by the beautiful and charming Diane Keaton.
Allen's screenplay, co-written with Marshall Brickman, about an ulcerous health food fanatic frozen in 1973 and thawed out 200 years later, is a doodle that desperately has to work up new subplots just to keep going, and the entire brainwashing thread is wearing (although it does allow Diane Keaton to do an impersonation of Brando which is very funny).
The frantic music punctuated the madness effectively as there were numerous slapstick exaggerated chase scenes, a tribute once again to the silents.There is a plot: mostly a satire of negative utopia sci-fi's popular at the time, but it's just a vehicle for this mad ride through the world of the future; a universe of organized chaos abstracted from the uniquely warped perspective of Woody Allen..
Fact is, no one could make a more spot-on spoof on the future TODAY than Woody Allen did back in 1973.Diane Keaton is at her absolute best in the film, too.
And "Sleeper" is only one little step below "Love and Death", which doesn't make it any less enjoyable.So, Woody Allen is Miles Monroe, a jazz clarinetist and sympathetic owner of "Happy Carrot" Health Food shop, subjected to an unwanted cryopreservation, he's awakened 200 years later, in 2173 in the kind of future that would make anyone miss a year like 1973.
If the conclusion seems sentimental, it's still the wisest response to the whole non-sense brought-up by the world and the proof that besides comedy, Allen has also a talent to create great romances.And beyond the undeniable 'makes-you-think' merit of the film, it's also an opportunity to enjoy pure Allen's slapstick, something that goes on the same level than the pioneers such as Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, with a daringness that only he can get way.
Sleeper is probably the best of Woody Allen's early 'funny' films.
This neurotic little man wakes up in the future 200 years from his own time, which is 1973.He's cryonically frozen without his consent.The year 2073 is slightly different from his own time.It is ruled by a totalitarian government and sex isn't done manually anymore.This man, who was the owner of the Happy Carrot Healt-Food store in Manhattan in his own time, now gets a new job as a spy.The underground movement uses him as one to infiltrate the Aires project.He also falls for a socialite girl called Luna Schlosser.The movie is a great parody of known works of science fiction, like H.G. Wells The Sleeper Awakes and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973) does the greatest job mixing Sci-Fi with comedy.Allen and Diane Keaton also make a great comedy team.John Beck is great as Erno Windt.Mary Gregory is terrific as Dr. Melik.I saw this movie back in 1993 and now I saw it again last thursday (Sep 2).I remembered it being funny but I didn't remember it being this funny!
Rags the dog, who keeps saying "Hello, I'm Rags" is quite amusing.When Allen and Keaton pretend to be doctors who have to clone the dictator from a nose is absolutely hilarious.Sometimes the movie seems like a silent picture with the fast paced jazz music being played.Woody Allen shows us the future you've never seen before!.
This is my favorite of Woody Allen's zany 1970s comedies, and it's probably no coincidence that it's also the one to first pair him with one of his film muses, Diane Keaton.Allen plays a man who has been cryogenically frozen and wakes up years later in a much-altered future world.
Of course, much of the fun in watching this movie now comes from seeing a guess at what a future world would look like from a 1973 perspective (dig that Orgasmatron!) But aside from that, the film is filled with hilarious sight gags and one-liners.
By that I mean the idea that a government that practiced certain styles of "behavior modification" involving the treatment of its citizenry that ultimately required the help of "rebels" in order to set the records straight about the past and possible futures is a funny one, and apt, simply because of writer and director Woody Allen's comedic way of expressing the future's need for comic relief and societal criticism, by becoming the suffering "resurrected" or "reawakened" "sleeper" who needs nobody to tell him what is right and wrong about the society he wakes up in.His fellow actors, Diane Keaton and the assorted, gifted and hilariously funny crew that he leads through the turbulence of a society gone to machine and dictatorial control and the means to effect his capture and possible destruction if he does not comply with the new society's views are excellent in depicting a future that has inexplicably lost human-centered reasoning and common sense, and his addition of funny statements and movie scenes involving large vegetables and robots (including himself dressed up as one to escape authorities) who are created and dismantled in high-rise office buildings can be seen as nothing short of brilliant social awareness and pointed and timely expressions of dismay, doom and gloom.The scenes involving Diane Keaton as a "guerilla fighter" who takes the side of an anarchistic assistant to Woody Allen's character after he kidnaps her in a forest setting are on par with some of the newer Woody Allen and Diane Keaton comedy movies that came after "Sleeper" - notably Annie Hall.
Woody Allen is in top form combining sharp one liners, physical comedy and right on jabs at our view of science, sci-fi stories, politics and shallow pop culture.Starting out with making fun of the desire to freeze one's body to prolong life, Woody takes direct aim at health food fads and an oppressive police state as well as Marxist revolutionaries.
It's not until Love & Death do we begin to see a further development into Allen's psyche, that of neurosis & philosophical existentualism.But for Sleeper we have a decent combination of the visual over the verbal and it works very well, especially with his old sparring partner Keaton to bounce his gags off.Again, like a lot of early Allen films he fills the movie with many many jokes, some work some don't.
Perhaps he still didn't feel very confident to fully develop his more truer qualities of telling a funny story rather than simply rely on quick visual humour to move the film along and keep the audience happy.I doubt if anyone would have guessed back in the early 70s that Allen would eventually go full circle with his passion for film genres - from the middle-brow intellectualism of Annie Hall & Manhattan, to the sombre Bermanesque qualities of September, before returning to a more accessable light humour with Manhattan Murder Mystery and Mighty Aphrodite.In addition I suspect that even the most ardent Woody fan would be pushed to admit to liking every one of his films over the last 30 years since most of them fall into themes.
Like most Woody Allen movies, there is a love interest and this is film she is played by Diane Keaton, who cracked me up with her funny expressions and crazy lines.
It does get a bit out of hand near the end, but I liked the chemistry between Allen &  Keaton and you can't say that it wasn't original for its time.Budget: $2million Worldwide Gross: $18.3millionI recommend this movie to people who are into there Woody Allen movies about a man who wakes up 200 years in the future after a operation that goes wrong.
On his adventure he meets a Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton), discovers new technology, and disguises as a robot.My Critique: Don't get me wrong, I think Woody Allen is one of film's greatest directors.
Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton Sleeper is set in a future with government oppression.
He had tackled satire back in 1971 with Bananas, but really knew how make it work just two years later with Sleeper, one of his most popular films, and one of his last slapstick comedies before he moved on to maturer work like Annie Hall and Interiors, his love letter to Ingmar Bergman.
Revelations concerning his private life continue to concern, baffle and appal, but if you can put these uncomfortable allegations aside (which is understandably a big ask for some people), there is still plenty to admire about Allen's contribution to comedy and cinema as a whole.Sleeper concerns Miles Monroe (Allen), a jazz musician and owner of a health-food store who goes in for a routine surgical procedure only to be cryogenically frozen without his knowledge and revived some 200 years in the future.
For years the rhetoric has been something like "Woody Allen's early films are great--the funny ones".
Starring Allen as a health foods store owner in Greenwich Village who is cryogenically frozen and brought back 200 years into the future and forced to pass as a robot in the home of Diane Keaton in order to keep his life, Sleeper is a hilarious take on a sci-fi film and a standout in Allen's filmography.
I laughed then, and, watching it years later, I still laugh.200 years from now, Miles - owner of The Happy Carrot health food store in 'Green-witch village' is revived (well, they peel the tin foil off him - including his glasses).What happens next is what can best be described as George Orwell's future in 1984, meets Buster Keaton, Slapstick,and more - all encapsulated by the very funny Woody Allen.Co-starring a young, lovely Diane Keaton, Woody is revived as part of a futuristic underground's plot to overthrow their sedentary but dictatorial life.Keaton plays Luna Schlosser - poet, creator of greeting cards (she got a '...PhD in oral sex....', who Miles captures to help him when the security forces try to capture/reprogramme him.The movie's look - blacks & whites predominate the sets & wardrobes (including one gentleman at Luna's party, who's wearing a bowler hat reminiscent of Clockwork Orange, and a (backward) swastika - 'fashion'), make the film view of tomorrow see dated, but, hysterical too.Most of the film plays with little dialogue - just the jazz music of Woody Allen & Co.This - along with Annie Hall, are - to me - the bookends of Woody at his funniest (and best)..
There are a lot of funny quotes, but the one I loved the most was when Diane Keaton asked Woody Allen "you don't believe in science, you don't believe in political systems and you don't believe in God. What do you believe in?" "Sex and death.
Audiences loved Allen in his bumbling slapstick comedic roles and this may be the best of his early series of comedies with him as a modern Charlie Chaplin like star of those films.
There are other Woody Allen fantasy comedies I prefer, for instance "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and "Zelig." But "Sleeper" has memorable, brainy bits that I still find funny like the Volkswagen dug up after 200 years and starts the first time.
In contrast with Woody Allen's later films, "Sleeper" chooses to escape the New York of the present, and, in a similar way, it's rather differently funny to his later classics.The movie meticulously sets up lots of amusing situations and set-pieces (like the giant tape machine and the expanding instant pudding) and the humour lies in these and in physical comedy, rather than in the more typical wisecracks and one-liners, which often fall a little flat.Another extremely successful aspect of "Sleeper" is the tone of the movie: the enthusiastic cast, the excellent music and the carefully chosen locations and props combine to give the movie a fresh and upbeat feel (there are a few dramatic moments, but they're not taken too seriously).But, all things considered, it's not so much the unorthodox nature of "Sleeper" that makes it so great - it's just really funny!
Allen's films work best when the laughs come from the characters and the script, and I don't think that Allen is the right type of comic to make slapstick work.The plot follows the story of Miles Monroe; a jazz playing health store owner from 1973, who wakes up to find himself 200 years in the future.
Sleeper is a movie about Miles Monroe, played, of course, by Woody Allen.
You have to look at Sleeper on its own and understand that it is the work of a still learning Woody Allen who was still perfecting his wistful style of comedy and satire that we know and love today.