Dr Lenera
Posts: 3450
Joined: 19/10/2005
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Having trouble resising images at the moment so apologies!
Dr. Lawrence Angelo works for Virtual Space Industries, running experiments in increasing the intelligence of chimpanzees using drugs and virtual reality. One of the chimps escapes using warfare technology that he was being trained to even though Angelo is generally a pacifist who would rather explore the intelligence-enhancing potential of his research without applying it for military purposes. The ape is befriended by Jobe Smith, a local church groundskeeper with a learning disability, before it is shot by the military. Angelo falls into alcoholism, threatening his relationship with his wife, then one day he notices Jobe mowing his lawn. Perhaps, with some alteration to his old formula, he could begin his work again and make Jobe smarter……
After Tron and Brainstorm first employed the concept in the early 80’s, the next major motion picture to deal with virtual reality was not for over a decade. The Lawnmower Man is almost a really good science fiction thriller, and it certainly has one of those stories that is rife with meaning, though in the end it’s mostly just another variation on the Frankenstein idea of the scientist who goes too far playing God and the creation who goes wrong because of this, and actually if you remove the ground-breaking [for their time] computer effects it’s not really very original at all. It doesn’t bear much resemblance to Stephen King’s short story The Lawnmower Man, which is about a man who hires somebody to mow his lawn and that somebody has the mower cut the lawn all by itself and kill the owner as a sacrifice to the God Pan. The film’s initial script was called Cyber God but was rewritten when New Line wanted to put in elements from King’s story which they held the rights to. When the film was released, to decent box office, under the title Stephen King’s The Lawnmower Man, the writer, who was unhappy about having a film boasting the title of one of his stories but not being much like it, sued the studio three times before they complied and removed his name from prints.
Seen today, one cannot help but consider the film very dated technically. The occasions when computer-orientated things happen outside of the virtual reality world, like a man on fire, look awful, and why does anyone who needs to go into the virtual reality need to wear spandex suits like the ones in Tron? The actual virtual reality sequences still look rather good though; yes, things have moved on, but I don’t think the intent was to create a realistic virtual world anyway. Everything leaps out at you [as much as it pains me to say this, they could almost justify re-releasing this movie in 3D, perhaps with more and maybe improved virtual reality sequences] as we fly over a landscape with islands in the sky and through a Star Wars climax-like environment. The best sequence is when Jobe takes his girlfriend for a spin in the world and, after they have sex and meld into a butterfly, he turns into a monstrous demon, partly because he is playing with her and partly because he can’t help revealing his true evil self.
Of course this stuff is only a small part of the movie which is for some of its length a variation on the Daniel Keyes novel Flowers For Algernon, which was made into the really moving 1968 film Charly. Once again a mentally disabled man is turned, by science, into a man of great intelligence, but for it to eventually go wrong. Jeff Fahey perhaps overplays Jobe in the early scenes with his wide eyes and gormless expression, but it’s interesting watching him gradually change. The story is also about a scientist who desperately wants to do good and doesn’t see what is wrong with what he is trying to do, even if he is against the US military getting involved. Things get rather silly around half way through when Pierce Brosnan’s scientist briefly becomes an action hero when he has to deal with shady government agents. By now Jobe has some special powers, but unlike the lead characters of the King-based Carrie, Firestarter and The Dead Zone, ceases to be sympathetic, even if those he kills have all been nicely set up earlier as nasty people we look like to see buy it [sadistic priest, abusive husband etc]. Sadly, the idea of someone who can control minds doesn’t create as much fear or tension as it should and the climactic scenes, even the ones set in virtual reality, are not as exciting as they ought to be.
Brosnan gives a really strong performance in this film and Jenny Wright does her best in a thankless role as the tart who Jobe starts sleeping with. Dan Wyman’s music score, relying greatly on synthesised voices, is pathetically weak. Overall this is still worth a watch especially in its Director’s Cut. The Lawnmower Man is a perfect example of how extra footage, in this respect 31 mins, can alter and improve a movie. The pace is certainly slower in the first half, but more footage of Jobe and the monkey make its death more traumatic and the film goes on to become as much about Brosnan’s character as it is Fahey’s. He becomes a more complex and at times less likeable character. We even see a major character killed which did not occur on the Theatrical Cut! A little quaint and very cliched, but still a fairly involving film which to my mind [not having watched it for many years] succeeded better in many of its quieter scenes than its louder ones.
Rating: 6.5./10
Dr. Benjamin Trace creates a brilliant device which allows unhindered access to all sources of electronic information such as banks and hospitals. When he questions their motives, the corporation that funded his research, led by scientist Benjamin Walker, take him to court and claim the device as their own. Trace disappears, so the corporation pulls a crippled Jobe from the wreckage of the first movie and offers him a job. Seven years later, Jobe’s secret work for Walker has lead to a future that’s advanced on the surface, but hides a sad underbelly of poverty and unemployment. A now 16-year-old Peter Parkette is now a computer hacker living underground and is found by Jobe in cyberspace. He wants Peter to bring Trace to him so that he can finish a powerful chip. It seems that Jobe has plans that go far beyond the sharing or stealing of information……
The DVD which I bought of The Lawnmower Man advertised in a small bubble on the front that the set also contained ‘free copy’ of the sequel. That in itself ought to set alarm bells ringing. Normally if a DVD set contains a film and its sequel they are both mentioned together rather than the knowledge that the second movie is also in the set being almost hidden away. The quality of the copy is also terrible because the UK distributors just copied a video that certainly looked like it had had too many plays. Yes, you got that right, so you have ghosting and blotches and all the kind of stuff you’ll remember from well-worn video tapes. I doubt anyone would want to upgrade it to the R1 though, as this is a seriously bad sequel that certainly deserves its appalling reputation, an awesomely stupid concoction that manages to be both confusing and dumb but isn’t enjoyable either, unlike a large amount of other bad science fiction. It’s easy to understand why Jeff Fahey declines to return as the Lawnmower Man, and why the film was such a flop.
In all of my reviews, I write a brief synopsis of the first third or so, but I actually had to spend a couple of minutes researching for this one, because I was not entirely sure what happened. The storytelling is so muddled that at times the only things you can be sure of are that the words ”cyber” and ”virtual” will turn up every minute or so. You know you’re watching a stinker when the words “The Future” appear on screen at the beginning with no date. This future is a poor man’s Blade Runner with lots and lots of blue to try and compensate for the lack of detail. The virtual reality technology in this story can now approximate reality, so the visuals don’t resemble those in the first film much, but most of it just consists of the kids flying over the ground Peter Pan style. In fact, not much occurs in virtual reality at all, which might be just as well considering the early scene where there’s a chase involving bike-type vehicles which lasts all of thirty seconds and is so ineptly staged it’s hard to tell what has happened. These first few minutes also destroy any good will anyone may have to this sequel in the scene where Peter appears to Jobe in his virtual reality world and asks him to help him. If you recall the first film, Peter was Jobe’s only real friend and their relationship was almost the heart of the film, certainly Jobe’s side of the story. Therefore you would think that much would be made of what should be a really touching reunion, but the scene is virtually emotionless and is over in no time.
The majority of the film consists of Dr Trace and our three heroic teenagers, who are homeless but have somehow been able to teach themselves advanced computer science and who possess equipment that works in an old train, trying to steal this chip Jobe is making called the Krylon chip and evading Jobe’s attempts to destroy them by controlling seemingly everything that is powered by computers [the one half-decent scene involves two trains]. We aren’t told enough about this chip and people keep talking about something called “Egypt” which is connected with it but I’ll be damned if I could work out what it is. It’s decided to, and I quote: “make Jobe so angry he destroys himself”, but the climax is…..a sword fight, which ends hilariously when one guy taps the other one and he jumps several feet backwards. But then there’s also that bizarre bit where they try to find out who wrote a computer program by looking at a 3D image of a word. In fact the film is crammed full of bizarre bits, but director Farhad Mann fails to inject much fun into the proceedings except incompetent staging of the simplest scenes.
Austin O’ Brien returns from the first film and Patrick Bergin turns up after a while, his hammy performance showing that he realises what he’s in and is doing his best to have fun with it. Robert Folk’s score is actually very good and actually sounds too grand for what is happening on screen, though the last two minutes of the end credits occur in total silence. Overall this is a piece of rubbish that is only really interesting for some of its concepts, as stupidly expressed as they are. When Jobe tries to turn the world into a virtual reality world, or make everyone live in his virtual reality world [it’s not really clear what he’s trying to do], I couldn’t help thinking of The Matrix and avenues which the Wachowski brothers could have gone down. Then again, all throughout Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, I kept thinking of other films I’d rather be watching.
Rating: 2/10
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check out more of my reviews on http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/
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