Sleeper

One's response to most of Woody Allen's early films tends to vary according to mood. Sometimes his slapstick absurdities seem priceless, other times they seem downright juvenile. Ditto for his endless jokes about sex. Sleeper is no exception. It tells the story of Miles Monroe (Allen), owner of the Happy Carrot Health Food Store in Greenwich Village, who in 1973 goes into hospital for a minor operation and wakes up two hundred years later with the mission of saving the world as he knows it.

Written by Allen with Marshall Brickman and loosely based on the classic science fiction novel "When The Sleeper Wakes" by H. G. Wells, stylistically the film recalls the silent comedies of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd aided not a little by the anachronistic ragtime score (with Allen playing clarinet). If you're in the mood it is an intermittently amusing spoof of films such as THX 1138 with some nice futuristic set design but a preponderance of silliness.

 

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