FILM REVIEW: Sleeper by Simon Barton

Sleeper, Woody Allen's typically irreverent take on the kind of dystopian future seen in Nineteen Eighty-Four or Fahrenheit 451, marks the transition between his so-called "early, funny films" and his more mature work of the late 1970s... after he's got the giant banana-skin joke out of the way, of course.

Allen plays Miles Monroe, a Brooklyn health food store owner who goes into hospital for a routine operation in 1973 but, after complications, is frozen in cryogenic suspension and not revived for 200 years. Monroe wakes to find himself in a world seemingly devoted to pleasure  -  the citizens have robot servants and enjoy legal drugs and technologically-enhanced sex  -  but where the government monitor everybody's slightest movements and reprogram anyone who doesn't conform. Teaming up with Diane Keaton's spoilt, ditzy society girl / poet, he tries to escape the authorities and discover the dark secret at the heart of this future society. As in all the best Science Fiction, Allen uses this future world to hold a twisted mirror up to his own time and takes parodic pot-shots at contemporary concerns like feminism, Marxism, the Watergate scandal, inner city paranoia and Norman Mailer's ego...

With its surreal slapstick and racous trad-jazz score, Sleeper may not be to everyone's taste ( and is certainly dated ) but its energy and verve are undeniable. Allen rattles through scene after scene of absurd sight-gags and prat-falls, in tribute to Silent Movie -era greats such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, while still finding room for his trademark wry observations on life, death and sex. And any film featuring Diane Keaton impersonating Marlon Brando has to be seen to be believed...