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.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Woody Allen film:
Love and Death (1975)
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...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.