Metacritic reviews

There are some comparatively calm spots in the film, here and there, but they don't count. If anything, they allow you to catch your breath. Sleeper is terrific.

In his fourth movie, Allen comes into his own as a filmmaker, providing us with the comedy of the year.

Sleeper establishes Woody Allen as the best comic director and actor in America, a distinction that would mean more if there were more comedies being made.

With a dearth of psychoanalysis, the jazzy pace barely lets up, but the result - essentially an Allen stand-up show that just happens to be set in the middle of a fascistic, architecturally stunning future society - is no less seminal for its slapstick ebullience: a lesson that the pursuits of making art and making a complete idiot out of yourself are not mutually exclusive.

A clarinet player who also runs a health food store is frozen and brought back in the future by anti-government radicals in order to assist them in their attempts to overthrow an oppressive government. When he goes off on his own, he begins to explore this brave new world that has Orgasmatron booths to replace sex and confessional robots.

Sleeper is a highly inventive science fiction parody that is typical of Allen's tight, well-edited movies. Costumes by Joel Schumacher are excellent.

Sleeper has plenty of bald spots, lacks the inspired silent comedy of Take the Money and Run, but, these days, comedy beggars can't be choosers.

The film is loaded with throwaway literacy and broad slapstick, and while it fumbles the end, the parade of verbal and visual amusement is pleasant as long as it lasts.

An ungainly collection of one-liners and misdirected sight gags that hardly qualifies as a movie. But as a stand-up routine it's a scream.

It's a very even work, with no thudding bad lines and no low stretches, but it doesn't have the loose, manic highs of some of Allen's other films.