Post by ronnierocketago on Feb 18, 2010 8:52:05 GMT
THE LAWNMOWER MAN (1992) - **1/2
In the 1990s, we had a shitload of movies exploring or exploiting at least the gimmick of Virtual Reality. In fact the director of THE LAWNMOWER MAN later shot VIRTUOSITY, another picture about VR. My fellow oldtimers remember all that, right? The future according to Clinton Decade science fiction will be that we'll eventually create a whole realistic artificial universe within a computer. Here using big clunky helmets and ice hockey goalie gloves, we'll fantasize, roleplay fictional lives, but mostly goof off wasting our time in this cool digital sandbox with floating CGI blocks and bland blue/green backgrounds filled in with bright lame neon drapes.
Well we didn't get the silly equipment junk and (much) better graphics, but the future did come true: You're using it right now. That's right, the Internet. Supplementing with video games like the "free will" GRAND THEFT AUTO franchise and playing God with a population in THE SIMS series, we're not yet able to simulate the visceral feel of flying or killing or fornicating, but I suppose we'll get there eventually. because of our driving hormonal fantasy demand for "safe sex" without wearing a raincoat or popping pills. Then like that FUTURAMA episode, everybody boinks their own personal robot bedslaves, dies a virgin, and the species goes extinct. Can't wait.
THE LAWNMOWER MAN is basically a cyberpunk FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON meets FRANKENSTEIN. At least that's what it wants to be, but it's nothing more than a mindless bargain basement science fiction thriller ripped off from older much better (and more intelligent) movies. But compared to most similar B-fare like your standard Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie of the Week, it's not too bad.
LAWNMOWER MAN's sole notoriety is for its then-impressive CGI effects, eight minutes worth which took 7 people over 8 months to complete. But this is a good example of an essential truth: Better FX never beat better filmatics. Compare LAWNMOWER MAN with say the lightcycle race in TRON which despite coming out a decade earlier (with "inferior" FX) is more exciting, more tightly-cut, and impressively still fresh in 2010. LAWNMOWER MAN is....eh. It's one thing to be dated, it's another to be irrelevant.
Pierce Brosnan is your typical movie scientist. He's obsessive with his work, which causes the wife to dump his ass. He's inexplicably handsome (good genes) and we know he's super-intelligent because he wears glasses. He spouts meaningless technobabble which I'm sure Brosnan doesn't know what he's talking about. He's pissy because as a pacifist he wants his ground-breaking VR research for peaceful means, but his government bankrollers are all evil bloodthirsty idiotic brutes who're only interested in the military applications. Hey movies, unless you're a DAY OF THE DEAD type, I don't want to see that goddamn cliche again ok? AVATAR has made me allergic.
Anyway Brosnan on the side decides to expand his brain-development experiments to humans, and his retarded lawnman Jeff Fahey becomes the guinea pig. Fahey's IQ grows leaps and bounds, learns Latin in two hours, teaches himself to drive, grows self-confidence, seduces a hot wealthy widower, questions authority, all that. Then Brosnan's nefarious supervisors get involved andyeah this is so going to end well. No way Brosnan's creation turns against them, no sir.
Still LAWNMOWER MAN has some good aspects. Brosnan as always is a solid dependable leading presence. Fahey (mostly known for his LOST work) is quite decent as a likeable if tragic corrupted innocence, even if he conducts your usual Hollywood "mentally challenged" acting method. You know what I mean, eyes real wide act like an overenthusiastic child. More a cartoon than a realistic handicap. I believe TROPIC THUNDER would criticize him for not going retard enough. The movie was however incredibly prophetic saying how by 2001, everyone will be "hooked" on-line. I appreciated Brosnan actually taking full responsibility for what happens, even if most wasn't his fault.
There is also a clever scene. In his initial smarts-spurt, Fahey now a "man," decides he finally wants to get laid. But he has no reference in mind, so (for good comic effect) he uses for inspiration a Marlboro Man ad on the back of one of his comic books. When he consumates his affair within the VR machine, the poor gal's avatar is swamped by CGI slime. Who wrote this movie, a hentai scripter? I also like how when the empowered hero gets back at his tormentors, this would be a revenge fantasy in most other movies. Instead he inevitably develops a self-righteous vicious Godhood, though very creative with some of his punishments: A wife/child beating husband gets brutally grinded up by a lawnmower, a bully is labotomized by his brain endlessly "mowed," and Brosnan's boss gets demolecularized and then reassembled repeatedly, his screams of agony heard periodicly. Ouch.
As genre trash goes, I was going through the motions holding LAWNMOWER MAN's hand to a point, but there's just way too much stupid bullshit even for me. Why does the government arbitrarily decide to give Fahey the same steroids which previously caused a highly-intelligent chimp to go nutzoid, escape, and kill several guards with their own guns? Their nonexistent reasoning is "Let's see how this works on humans." What, not impressed enough that soldiers could go from Forest Gump to Albert Einstein on the flip of a switch? No the real reason is without this plot turn, there is no movie.
This would also describe Fahey's sudden development of telekinesis, telepathy, and mind control. Why does he deploy that on everyone but Brosnan? Again nada, no movie. Why do movies like this persist in perpetuating that New Age sillyness that if we can just unlock the rest of our brain, we'll gain amazing mental superpowers? Why would Fahey's body deflate (?!?) when he uploads his mind into the computer? Why does the VR machine need be a gyrosphere, and users wear rejected TRON costumes? Where are the lab's guards when he sneaks in with his screwbuddy? Why is the mother conveniently asleep when the kid bolts to complicate the finale? Why would they go underground with Brosnan? Why-
Ah fuck this. To be fair, there was apparently a Director's Cut which got released on tape (but not DVD) that restored 33 minutes and allegedly a better (less dumb) product. But I'm arsed if I want to actually bother hunting something that obscure for a payoff that probably isn't worth it. So keep that in mind. Yet the most fascinating thing about LAWNMOWER MAN has in fact nothing to do at all with the movie.
When released in theatres (and initially on video), it used an additional moniker "Stephen King's-" later removed by a lawsuit. It's true King wrote a short story also titled THE LAWNMOWER MAN, which New Line Studio owned rights to along with this film, but that's the only similarity they share. King's tale apparently involved a pagan worshipper who uses a supernaturally-possessed lawnmower to cut the grass, which he promptly eats while nude.
I would pay to watch that movie.