In yet another installment of my continuing series of reviews of overlooked movies, I review the 1973 Woody Allen movie ‘Sleeper‘.
Netflix felt I should see this movie, and who am I to argue with the Netflix movie guessing AI? I mean, it is vaguely better than having an angry monkey hurl DVDs at me, but with a lot less of the unsightly facial blemishes the next day. I haven’t really seen much Woody Allen, so I was somewhat interested in seeing this flick.
Amanda, who was taking a break from playing The Game That Must Not Be Named, informed me that Wikipedia told her it was loosely based on H. G. Wells novel The Sleeper Awakes. She then proceeded to poke fun at me for choosing to watch such an obscure Woody Allen movie, and for the fact I have not seen any Woody Allen movies. Well!
Basically, Woody Allen stars as a man who is frozen or something back in the 60′s (hey, I watch them, not write book reports on them) to be revived in a few years, but ends up getting woken up 200 years later. A group hoping to prevent the cloning of their recently blown up dictator feels Woody here, not being in any of the computers, can get in and prevent the project.
Slapstick ensues from the beginning. Woody is chased around Benny Hill style until at last he manages to slip into a truck full of robots and make a getaway. Somehow, he manages to disguise himself as one of these silver-headed butler looking robots, but ends up getting stuck in this disguise and delivered to an end user. He’s put to task to get party food ready, and ends up in a broom fight with a huge blob of instant pudding. He then learns some interesting things from the party-goers: in this new age, no one bothers with ‘manual’ sex, instead, they pop into a sex machine for a few seconds. Curious!
His disguise gets blown and he escapes with his ‘owner’, who is a very young and perky Diane Keaton. She wants nothing to do with him at first, until she learns that she is going to be captured too for ‘assisting’ with his escape. While stuck in the woods overnight, Woody heads out in search of food, and ends up in probably the funniest scene of the movie. He stumbles into a clearing that has a small garden of GIANT fruits and vegetables. He wanders over to a massive 10 foot long banana and pulls the cord out of it, and starts to peel it, but the farmer spots him. He tries to run, but slips on the peel. As does the farmer. Over and over. Oh ho ho! Good times.
Overall, I really liked this film. It was far more Benny Hill style slapstick than I had bargained on. They went to great lengths to just go over the top with the gags, and it really made the film watchable. I would highly recommend that you add this movie to your queue or however it is that you see movies. I’m looking forward to more Woody Allen, and maybe a little less lip from the GF 
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