Sleeper (1973)

Waking up in a strange new world can make anyone feel lost, especially when you were only supposed to have a minor operation. Woody Allen's "Sleeper," which he co-wrote with Marshall Brickman, might be called his Buster Keaton movie, just as "Interiors" was his Ingmar Bergman film and "Stardust Memories" his Federico Fellini. Relying more on visual, conceptual and slapstick gags than on his trademark verbal wit, it's arguably the funniest of what came to be known as his "early, funny" films and a milestone in his growth as a director. Allen plays Miles Monroe, a Greenwich Village health-food store owner and clarinetist who checks into the hospital in 1973 for a routine ulcer operation and wakes up 200 years later, after being cryogenically frozen. Society has become a sterile, authoritarian police state ruled by a mysterious leader, and Miles is recruited by the underground resistance, soon joined by Luna (Diane Keaton, at her bubbliest), a pampered, shallow poet. Among the most famous gags are Miles' attempt to pass as a robot servant, a futuristic pleasure machine called the Orgasmatron, a McDonald's sign boasting of trillions served, a giant fruit patch and an inflatable suit that makes for a hilarious getaway, all set to a lively Dixieland jazz score featuring Allen himself on clarinet. The film's comic defrosting scenes were later lampooned in Mike Myers' "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery."