Sleeper (1973)
Hilarious and Stupidly Hilarious and Never Just Stupid
Laughter is its own best defense, and so if you find early Woody Allen films funny, you'll love laughing here. But an hour and a half of good laughs is one thing, and a cinematic masterpiece is another. Not that Allen's goal was the stars, not yet.
I know, to not go gaga over "early Woody Allen" is announcing that I'm a brick, a philistine, or just a humorless aesthete. Well, maybe not. Woody Allen can be uproariously funny and also deeply funny at the same time, and that might happen here now and then, but it happens more in Love and Death (his next film, in the same silly early vein) and of course in his next film after that, Annie Hall, which is a terrible pinnacle to compare any of his films against. I won't even mention (not) later films where humor is more consistently layered with high drama (Hannah) or high art (Stardust).
The concept in Sleeper is funny to start with, of course, and that's ninety percent of the game. The funny ploys depend, often, on that single 200 year misalignment. But the slapstick, and the schtick, are uneven. I suppose you might love the idea, and the characters, and the actors, so much you can laugh at Diane Keaton doing a bad New York accent (is that what it was?). But either way you have to admit these kinds of ploys are fresh in Allen's hands, and the movie never gets dull.
Allen himself will make reference to earlier directors, and usually talks about them with a reverence he doesn't offer for his own films--part humility, part truth. Following that lead, it's fair to at least look at the prototypical kinds of humor in Chaplin and Keaton (Buster, not Diane) films, or even Peter Sellers vehicles that are closer to Allen's time (and of some obvious influence). And we can sometimes see a gift for transcendence or timelessness in those other films that Sleeper, itself, doesn't have, even when it might be making reference to them.
Funniest scenes? See for yourself. I laugh just thinking about them.
Hilarious and Stupidly Hilarious and Never Just Stupid
Laughter is its own best defense, and so if you find early Woody Allen films funny, you'll love laughing here. But an hour and a half of good laughs is one thing, and a cinematic masterpiece is another. Not that Allen's goal was the stars, not yet.
I know, to not go gaga over "early Woody Allen" is announcing that I'm a brick, a philistine, or just a humorless aesthete. Well, maybe not. Woody Allen can be uproariously funny and also deeply funny at the same time, and that might happen here now and then, but it happens more in Love and Death (his next film, in the same silly early vein) and of course in his next film after that, Annie Hall, which is a terrible pinnacle to compare any of his films against. I won't even mention (not) later films where humor is more consistently layered with high drama (Hannah) or high art (Stardust).
The concept in Sleeper is funny to start with, of course, and that's ninety percent of the game. The funny ploys depend, often, on that single 200 year misalignment. But the slapstick, and the schtick, are uneven. I suppose you might love the idea, and the characters, and the actors, so much you can laugh at Diane Keaton doing a bad New York accent (is that what it was?). But either way you have to admit these kinds of ploys are fresh in Allen's hands, and the movie never gets dull.
Allen himself will make reference to earlier directors, and usually talks about them with a reverence he doesn't offer for his own films--part humility, part truth. Following that lead, it's fair to at least look at the prototypical kinds of humor in Chaplin and Keaton (Buster, not Diane) films, or even Peter Sellers vehicles that are closer to Allen's time (and of some obvious influence). And we can sometimes see a gift for transcendence or timelessness in those other films that Sleeper, itself, doesn't have, even when it might be making reference to them.
Funniest scenes? See for yourself. I laugh just thinking about them.