Sleeper may very well have been the first time Woody Allen was able to pull it all together: a story with coherence and flow (the terrain on which Bananas, Take the Money and Run, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask struggled), a pleasing balance of slapstick and verbal wit, and an intellectual undercurrent (which, to be sure, is very much an undercurrent, for it's so disguised underneath Allen's playful whimsy and absurdist logic). Woody was still a young, instinctive director at this point, but with three uproariously original films under his belt, he was beginning to erect the confidence and studio backing he needed to create a sprawling science fiction farce like Sleeper.
The film satirizes America of the 70's by projecting society's foolishness into that of a totalitarian police state of 2173. It's an intriguing concept, because when Woody's character discusses American history to awestruck future humans, they laugh at the seeming idiocy. In turn, the audience laughs, likely for the same reasons they do, so the film is able to induce the same kind of hypnotized state in its audience that it reveals with its characters, reflecting how easily people can be blinded by the delusions of their situation. Allen stars as Miles Monroe, a jazz clarinetist and health-foods store owner in Greenwich Village who is cryogenically frozen following an operation only to wake up 200 years later in the presence of some dissidents hoping to use him as a method of obtaining secrets from the government in light of his complete anonymity (in this society, punctilious records are kept on everyone). Being the neurotic pipsqueak he is, Miles flees just at the suggestion of possible capture, eventually finding his way out of desperation into the suit of one of the household robots that run amok.
He is delivered to the house of Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton), a complacent ignoramus with acclaim as a poet, who hasn't the slightest of suspicion regarding her new assistant. Once his identity is threatened, he reveals himself to Luna, takes her under his wing in his mission to live unharmed, and transforms her - against his exact intentions - into a pseudo-intellectual that spits out factoids about Karl Marx. Ultimately, she serves the role that Keaton always does for Allen: the optimistic free-spirit who gives him upbeat fodder against which he can unleash his quick-witted, nervous chattering. In Sleeper, this verbose aptitude is especially necessary given the sexual frigidity and displaced moral stance of the futuristic society (a device called an Orgazmatron is used to eschew the act of sex entirely).
The film has some of the most accomplished visuals of Allen's early work. With sleek set design that is often meant to emulate that of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sleeper exhibits a focused futuristic look and dynamic camerawork. To contrast the strictness of the society and their architecture however, there are also a wealth of scenes where Allen breaks from this cool aesthetic and becomes uninhibitedly slapstick. As in a Buster Keaton film, the camera simply will follow Allen's spontaneously silly gestures, such as when he sneaks into police-run territory to steal food for him and Luna in their forest hideaway (he is getting his hands on oversized bananas and strawberries, which are kept away due to popular acknowledgment of their unhealthiness, whereas cigarettes are good for you). The film's roaring jazz soundtrack (which Allen himself played clarinet for) helps to lead the viewer through these outlandish romps. Miles and Luna pass themselves off in one last ditch effort as doctors familiar with cloning, sparking the arrival of the film's hilarious finale, which speaks to the hilarity of Allen's vision: they fudge a cloning of the dictator, who has been reduced to a lone nose.
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