Sleeper, 3 stars

What an odd duck of a movie this is! We have the normally cerebral Woody Allen attempting a sci-fi slapstick farce that appears to have a total budget of $731. And the kicker is, it kind of works.

I had the privilege of falling asleep on this movie at a party in college (I don't know what kind of parties you attended in college, but mine had lots of Woody and Fritz Lang) and had always longed to revisit it, only slightly because I aspire to be a Woody Allen completist. Upon a more energetic viewing, it holds up pretty well. Woody plays a clarinetist and health food store proprietor who is cryogenically frozen for 200 years and awakens in a sterilized future where he is recruited to help overthrow a paternal dictator who has made the public complacent in their anesthetization. Rarely is the entire plot of a film the MacGuffin, but that is the case here. The plot is merely a setup for some terrifically brave physical comedy by Allen. He wrangles a giant pudding, is hypnotized into thinking he is a Miss America contestant, and (in a scene whose symbolism I haven't yet parsed fully) rappels down the side of a building in a harness made of celluloid. At times he resembles Chaplin, with his small physique and deceptively careless use of his limbs. Diane Keaton gamely plays his love interest; a scene in which she plays Stanley Kowalski to Woody's Blanche DuBois got the biggest laughs from me. Some of the jokes haven't aged so well, like an Xavier Cugat reference or some jibes at Howard Cosell. The pace of the film seems a bit slack in places, which is troubling for a movie that's not quite 90 minutes. Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but the sound editing was a touch dissatisfying. Swing and ragtime music accompany several comedy scenes, probably to evoke the Keystone Kops, but at times it seemed that the music was cut in too early, giving away the fact that a joke was coming.

Overall this is a solid effort by Allen, falling squarely in the middle of his prolific filmography. I would recommend it mostly to fans of Allen or Keaton, or those looking to see what a more modern director can do with an old-fashioned slapstick sensibility. Most others would probably be more entertained elsewhere.