Miles (Woody Allen) went to sleep in 1973 and woke up in 2173.
Until you start watching (or re-watching) the entire Woody Allen canon of films, you don't stop to think about how many of his movies have a fantasy element. Even the more "serious" of his films usually include some sort of "discussion" between science, religion, philosophy, and pseudo-science.
Sometimes the Allen "fantasy" element works for me, and sometimes it doesn't. I do, however, almost always enjoy the "discussion" element. I'm writing this down here because I'm about 16 films into my Allen re-watch, and I'm still debating if I like his work as a whole, or if I just like his "best stuff" -- his best stuff generally being "discussion" not "fantasy" (the one exception being Midnight in Paris).
Sleeper, to me, isn't one of his better films, but at least it's a film that I can watch without finding myself zoning out. I hate zoning out during a movie, and I like to think my movie attention span is still intact, but man, the last two Allen films I watched, Zelig (1983) and Broadway Danny Rose (1984), were hard to pay attention to.
Sleeper works a little better, I think, because Woody is just Woody. The 22nd century government does not allow people to be unthawed, which begs the question: Why have the frozen been left around and not disposed of? But some rogue scientists unthaw Miles anyway. Then, Miles has to go into hiding, taking on the disguise of a "domestic" robot. I like when he quips that the robots are "uncanny," a reference to the "uncanny valley," a term that was first coined in the early 1970s.
To be fair, the robots don't look all that human by modern standards, and yet they somehow look more human, in some ways, that Miles pretending to be a robot. Until the other robots, Miles doesn't wear the front mask. He just has silver face paint. And of course he keeps wearing the trademark Woody Allen glasses. It's ridiculous.
The plot doesn't matter, really. Miles and Luna (Diane Keaton) naturally fall for each other. The end. I mean stuff happens, but none of it's all that memorable, which, I fear, means I will be watching this film again in 10 years, wondering if I liked it or not, and then I will watch it, think, "Hm, that was sort of fun and innovative, but not too memorable," and so on. In other words, some fun bits, but maybe the parts are a little better than the whole?
Rating: 3/5 stars
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