Production notes

Much of the film was shot in and around Denver, Colorado. The outdoor shots of the hospital were filmed at the Mesa Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. There is a brief shot of the main building of the Denver Botanic Gardens and of the concrete lamp posts. Other scenes were filmed in Los Angeles, Monterey and at the Culver City Studios. The Sculptured House, designed by architect Charles Deaton, is a private home located on Genesee Mountain near Genesee Park, west of Denver. The Mile Hi Church of Religious Science in Lakewood, Colorado, was turned into a futuristic McDonald's, featuring a sign counting the number sold: 795 followed by 51 zeroes. Author Christopher Turner has suggested that the orgasmatron, the electromechanical device that Monroe encounters, was a parody of Wilhelm Reich's orgone accumulator. Science fiction author Ben Bova was an uncredited science advisor to the film.

Sleeper opened at the Coronet and Little Carnegie theatres in New York City on December 17, 1973. It received positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 100% approval rating based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "In Sleeper, Woody Allen's madcap futurist comedy, practically each joke and one-liner hits its target." Vincent Canby, in The New York Times, called the film "terrific", saying it

confidently advances the Allen art into slapstick territory that I associate with the best of Laurel and Hardy. It's the kind of film comedy that no one in Hollywood has done with style in many years, certainly not since Jerry Lewis began to take himself seriously. Sleeper is a comic epic that recalls the breathless pace and dizzy logic of the old two-reelers. Roger Ebert gave the film 3+1⁄2 out of four stars, saying Allen "gives us moments in Sleeper that are as good as anything since the silent films of Buster Keaton." Pauline Kael for The New Yorker wrote that it was the "slapstick comedy of the year" and that it is the most "stable and sustained" of Allen's films.