.jeri.

Yay me, I'm only 3 weeks behind and have actually caught up to the movies I've seen while on medical vacation! As long as I keep it up I'll avoid having to do a mega movie round up.. although I do have quite a few movies piling up in my list of convalescence features.

Sleeper is an earlier picture by Woody Allen, who wrote, starred, and directed the film. It is about a man named Miles who went in to have a routine medical procedure done and ended up getting cryogenically preserved for 200 years. He is awoken in the future by a couple of doctors who hope that, since he is not documented in the government system, he might be able to help them get through to the underground and take out the country's totalitarian leader. That may sound serious, but this is Woody Allen we're talking about, so it's absolutely ridiculous!

I had no knowledge about this movie going into it and, at first, it had me cracking up. It's rare one gets to see Allen flourish as a physical comedic actor, and here he has plenty of opportunities to show off his talent in that arena. From the moment he takes his first steps after waking up to his pathetic imitation of a robot house servant, he is absolutely hilarious. Allen's nostalgia for old movies surfaces in this movie as an homage to the great physical comedians of the past, like the Marx Brothers, Chaplin, and Keaton. There's plenty of slapstick, which is sometimes hilarious, and sometimes a little lame.

There's also a lot of funny dialog that again reminded me about why I like Woody Allen, despite the many faults of his movies. The movie shows us a future that the people of the past feared, then injects Miles from the present (of the 1970s) to explain some of the past to the people of that future. At one point, research scientists question Allen about who certain political figures were as well as what the purpose of certain items were. Watching him explain the purpose of a set of chattering teeth was quite funny, as were his skewed answers about everything else.

The movie flows well for quite a while, with some really funny gags, props, situations, and some really interesting futuristic ideas (the pot orb was genius, by the way). After a while, though, Allen meets up with Diane Keaton, and the transition to get their characters on their way in the mission Miles has been given leads to some outright ridiculousness that feels a little more forced and not quite as funny. As the story goes over the top, and we find Allen and Keaton blathering at each other while posing as doctors who will be cloning a person from a nose, it just loses its gusto.

I am so glad I saw this movie, and I think that possible future viewings will make me appreciate it more, but it's a shame that its strengths didn't last through to its conclusion. I still prefer it over some of Allen's other movies (maybe even Crimes and Misdemeanors - is that Allen blasphemy?), even though it isn't perfect.