Sleeper
I basically watch Woody Allen films out of context. I started off with Match Point, and then went to see his masterpieces Annie Hall and Manhattan, then saw some more younger films (Scoop, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) then his 80s and 90s films. All in all, I am not really familiar with how his work evolved. I know the post-2005 films pretty well, I know that Stardust Memories is from 1980, Play it again Sam is from pre-Annie-Hall times and I have a vague idea that A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Love and Death and Sleeper were made around the same time as Annie Hall and Manhattan. Bottom line – I don’t really know the chronology of Woody Allen’s films very well, but I am getting the strong impression that the year of production defines the film.
Sleeper for example is the perfect mix out of Love and Death and Everything you wanted to know about sex. It shares the humor of the former and the quasi-sci-fi setting of the latter. In general though, I think that Woody Allen’s science-fiction fad was mostly silly. I like the social commentary (especially the very last scene of the film) and the overall plot of having to kill the nose, but I was utterly unhappy with the implementation of this plotline towards the last third of the film.
Some critics write that they don’t like Woody Allen’s early films in which he basically throws around funny one-liners and brings his characters into absurd situations which are, ultimately, not that funny. You can clearly see that in “Sleeper” (and partially in the murder plot in “Love and Death” too). There are some lines in the film which I absolutely loved, yet at the same time I wish less of the humor would come from the fact that the characters are being clumsy or stupid. I am annoyed when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton infiltrate a hospital and bicker about their private issues, I just don’t know what is funny about that. The film started off with so many elements of pure comedic gold (haha De Gaulle is a chef!) and had great moments until Woody Allen’s rendition of Blanche Dubois but then ended with a completely silly chase. Oh well.
The other thing which bothers me in Woody Allen’s science-fiction attempt is the complete disregard of science itself, as evidenced by Allen’s line “I don’t believe in science”. It’s just tiny things like how they crush a nose so that it cannot be used to clone a human being anymore. The concept of DNA was well-known at the time and a crushed nose can be used to clone someone just as well as an intact one. Sure, it doesn’t really matter, but you can see how it bugs me, right?
Similarly to “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy”, I think that “Sleeper” is quite underrated. Sure, neither of them is as great as Annie Hall and they all have their weaknesses, but these films are still amusing. Slapstick is generally underrated these days, and Woody Allen is on the line between great and silly when it comes to that.