| Sleeper |
Woody Allen is Miles Monroe, owner of a health food store, frozen 200 years after entering the hospital for a routine operation. He awakens in a brave new world and must overthrow the repressive government. He is hilarious as he is in all his early films. His comedy derives from a willingness to laugh at himself. He defines comedy as "tragedy plus time." Woody was the Graucho Marx of his era. Comedy being relative, different generations laugh at different things. Would today's audiences laugh at the robot bit? Diane Keaton became his counterpart.
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4 Rating
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| You mean, Bela Lugosi WASN'T the Mayor of New York City? |
Sleeper is one of Woody Allen's funniest movies of all time. He plays Miles Monroe, a clarinet player and proprietor of the Happy Carrot Health Food Store who dies during minor surgery at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. Criogenically frozen, he is later brought back by a group of radicals determined that he help them overthrow the oppressive government of the future in 2073.
Woody Allen mines comedy gold from every possible complication, and he is a wonder to behold as he experiences the Orgasmatron -- the future's new replacement for actual sex. Of course, the people of this future Allen has created are as ignorant as a box of rocks, and he is able to con them with ease. Part of their ignorance of history is because so much was lost during the war "when a man named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear device." (A comment that made New York City audiences howl with laughter!)
Diane Keaton is wonderful, as always, as the love interest on the run with Miles. "Where's the wine? Where's the seasoning?" is one of the classic lines of the film.
Sleeper is an outrageously funny film! |
5 Rating
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