A simple man is turned into a genius through the application of computer science.A simple man is turned into a genius through the application of computer science.A simple man is turned into a genius through the application of computer science.
Michael Valverde
- Day Gate Guard
- (as Mike Valverde)
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Brilliant scientist Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan) uses simple-minded gardener Jobe (Jeff Fahey) as a guinea pig in his virtual reality experiments, using mind altering drugs and immersive computer technology to enhance his subject's intelligence and awaken parts of the brain that have lain dormant for centuries. As Jobe becomes smarter and smarter, the evil corporation behind Angelo's funding pull a switcheroo on the drugs, making the gardener more aggressive. Eventually, Jobe attempts to leave the physical realm to inhabit the worldwide computer network, where he would be a technological god.
So dissimilar is this film to Stephen King's original short story, that the author successfully sued the company that made it. Despite this, The Lawnmower Man still feels very much like a King product, especially with its dysfunctional characters, small-town setting, and occasional religious overtones. Since I deem anything King-related to be worth a watch, no matter how slight the connection, I had a reasonably good time with the film, although there no denying that its once cutting-edge visuals now look horribly dated, and render the film less effective overall (it's hard to be impressed by graphics that most of today's kids could do better on their laptop).
Watch to see a cyberchimp firing a pistol, Fahey transforming from a simpleton to super buff stud-muffin, an abusive father being chased by a big red lawnmower, Jenny Wright as a rich floozy, and a pre-Bond Brosnan with floppy hair pulling Semtex out of thin air. Don't watch expecting to be wowed by incredible special effects (the burning of a sadistic priest ranks amongst the worst CGI that I have ever seen).
So dissimilar is this film to Stephen King's original short story, that the author successfully sued the company that made it. Despite this, The Lawnmower Man still feels very much like a King product, especially with its dysfunctional characters, small-town setting, and occasional religious overtones. Since I deem anything King-related to be worth a watch, no matter how slight the connection, I had a reasonably good time with the film, although there no denying that its once cutting-edge visuals now look horribly dated, and render the film less effective overall (it's hard to be impressed by graphics that most of today's kids could do better on their laptop).
Watch to see a cyberchimp firing a pistol, Fahey transforming from a simpleton to super buff stud-muffin, an abusive father being chased by a big red lawnmower, Jenny Wright as a rich floozy, and a pre-Bond Brosnan with floppy hair pulling Semtex out of thin air. Don't watch expecting to be wowed by incredible special effects (the burning of a sadistic priest ranks amongst the worst CGI that I have ever seen).
It's a bit 'B', a bit dated, but with redeemable characteristics. Some of the writing is pretty good. The direction was hammy, but at least the tone is managed well, over-all. Dr. Angelo's character is given a little berth to pass off as a realistic character; this invites us to identify with him as a "voice of reason" in a cartoonish sci-fi universe.
Of course, the whole thing uses the misunderstood tech trope of the year, "virtual reality", boosted by mind-altering drugs, as a hook for yet-another story about man's effort to cosmically transcend. This is a strained notion, as any technically savvy dude or dudette knows. So the whole thing rides on a willing suspension of disbelief. The question remains whether this act of suspension rewards us with a sustainable, ennobling myth.
Well, my attempt to give the flick a slight jolt by voting it a '7' is an indicator. The flick is surely dated, but not bad for its time. Where the story fails to fully ennoble, it at least maintains a sense of momentum; I found it quite watchable.
At the very least, it worth watching as a heroic effort by the producers to mythically bend new (at the time) tech toward a moral fable about humankind's perennial tech hubris expressed as yet-another effort to bite off more than can reasonably be chewed.
I was particularly struck by an interesting form taken by the usual story-management effort to keep Dr. Angelo's karma clean: That the dosing of his human subject with the "next-stage" experimental drugs was effected without his knowledge, via subterfuge by admins; not by the researcher (Angelo) himself. Very clever plot point, that!
Anyway. It's not a great flick, but may be worth watching as a kind of worthy period piece. It's a bit of an aesthetic casualty of the 'B'-flick hewings of production folks of the time: If you factor that out, you can see the glimmerings of decent sci-fi.
Of course, the whole thing uses the misunderstood tech trope of the year, "virtual reality", boosted by mind-altering drugs, as a hook for yet-another story about man's effort to cosmically transcend. This is a strained notion, as any technically savvy dude or dudette knows. So the whole thing rides on a willing suspension of disbelief. The question remains whether this act of suspension rewards us with a sustainable, ennobling myth.
Well, my attempt to give the flick a slight jolt by voting it a '7' is an indicator. The flick is surely dated, but not bad for its time. Where the story fails to fully ennoble, it at least maintains a sense of momentum; I found it quite watchable.
At the very least, it worth watching as a heroic effort by the producers to mythically bend new (at the time) tech toward a moral fable about humankind's perennial tech hubris expressed as yet-another effort to bite off more than can reasonably be chewed.
I was particularly struck by an interesting form taken by the usual story-management effort to keep Dr. Angelo's karma clean: That the dosing of his human subject with the "next-stage" experimental drugs was effected without his knowledge, via subterfuge by admins; not by the researcher (Angelo) himself. Very clever plot point, that!
Anyway. It's not a great flick, but may be worth watching as a kind of worthy period piece. It's a bit of an aesthetic casualty of the 'B'-flick hewings of production folks of the time: If you factor that out, you can see the glimmerings of decent sci-fi.
Given the absolute trainwreck that this film is in many respects, it's surprising that the story works as well as it does once it gets going. The middle of the film is actually somewhat engaging, there are scenes where odd flashes of competence shine through, and the beginning of the climax, at least, is pretty suspenseful, even though it peters out when it should be reaching a fevered pitch. Even with the plethora of problems, The Lawnmower Man is worth watching for fans of "so bad it's good" films (even though this isn't exactly so bad that it's good), just to witness the atrocious special effects (almost all CGI) and the bizarre concatenation of elements that it's almost impossible to imagine anyone thought would be a good idea if they weren't intentionally shooting for a comedy or an absurdist genre film. Yes, director/writer Brett Leonard, co-writer Gimel Everett and the production team were serious, and thought that they were producing a cutting-edge, hip and thrilling genre film--something like the Matrix of its time. That alone is funny enough once you've seen a few minutes of the film to make this worth a watch.
The story has two protagonists, one of which eventually becomes something of an anti-hero. The film begins with a text prediction about just how prevalent and influential virtual reality will be at the turn of the 21st Century. In retrospect, it underscores just how ridiculously inflated revolutionary or "savior" technology predictions tend to be. We then meet Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan before he was in a position to turn down starring roles), who is engaged in virtual reality research for the government (his superiors call their project/division "The Shop"). He's experimenting on monkeys, and per his superior's orders, the focus is on military uses--the monkey is being virtual reality trained in battle strategy while they're manipulating its aggression levels. As anyone who has seen at least two or three genre films could guess, this ends up backfiring. The monkey freaks out and runs rampant through the secret government facility, attacking employees.
Dr. Angelo semi-voluntarily goes on hiatus. He had wanted to eventually test human subjects for susceptibility to his virtual reality "mind expansion", without the emphasis on violence, but that seems a lost cause. However, after his wife leaves him, he decides that maybe he can do the research on his own. He decides that the perfect test subject is the titular lawnmower man--his neighbor Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey). Jobe happens to be developmentally disabled. Of course, things do not go exactly as planned with the tests on Jobe, either, especially once The Shop gets wind of what Dr. Angelo is doing.
The Lawnmower Man grew out of a Stephen King short story that most famously appeared in his Night Shift collection. The King story is only a few pages long, and it bears almost no resemblance to the film. The only scene that's at all similar is the one involving a lawn mower and Peter Parkette's (Austin O'Brien) father. It might be informative for those who have a less than consistently favorable opinion of King-oriented films to note that King sued to have any reference to his name removed. I actually like most King-oriented films, but I find the suit amusing, too.
What makes The Lawnmower Man such a trainwreck? The most prominent problem, because it is such a focus of the film, is the CGI. When Dr. Angelo is working with human subjects in The Shop's facilities, they wear "spiffy" spandex suits reminiscent of Tron (1982). That may be enough of a problem in itself (and just who made those suits if Dr. Angelo had never been authorized to work with humans?), but the bigger problem is that the CGI is also reminiscent of Tron. That's not to say that Tron isn't successful, but it had very primitive CGI. There, it was more excusable for three reasons. One, it was made in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when CGI _had_ to be much more primitive. Two, realizing this, Tron director Steven Lisberger aimed at creating more of a minimalist world. And three, once introduced to us, most of Tron took place in that world.
By the early 1990s, computer graphics had progressed quite a bit. Yet, Leonard allows The Lawnmower Man's CGI sequences to almost exclusively consist of brightly colored, low-resolution, simple geometric shapes floating around in a featureless world. Admittedly, The Lawnmower Man was a bit low-budgeted. But I'm not sure that excuses computer graphics that look like they were done on a Commodore 64 by someone working through a basic pixel animation book. And this stuff is supposed to "accelerate the evolution of the human mind?" It wouldn't matter so much if this were not the crux of the film. But the CGI is as important here as the scenes inside The Matrix are to that film. The effects work a bit better when they're integrated with cinematography. But Leonard avoids that more than he should.
And the CGI isn't the only problem. The story otherwise is extremely awkward. Most of it is unintentionally absurdist. Jobe lives in a little shack in an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood. A sadistic priest regularly flogs him. A beautiful widow seduces him. Peter's family is almost a spoof of the typical King family, with an abusive, alcoholic father. All of these people bizarrely live right next door to Dr. Angelo. I could go on and on, but there isn't room.
Still, there are aspects of the story that work. When Leonard finally gets around to death scenes, they're pretty good. The suspense stuff when Dr. Angelo is in Washington is good. And the overall arc about Jobe transforming, but getting out of control and seeking revenge is enjoyable, pithy and certainly a classic, archetypal plot. But this isn't anything if it's not a mixed bag. Watch expecting a trainwreck, and you should be entertained for an evening.
The story has two protagonists, one of which eventually becomes something of an anti-hero. The film begins with a text prediction about just how prevalent and influential virtual reality will be at the turn of the 21st Century. In retrospect, it underscores just how ridiculously inflated revolutionary or "savior" technology predictions tend to be. We then meet Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan before he was in a position to turn down starring roles), who is engaged in virtual reality research for the government (his superiors call their project/division "The Shop"). He's experimenting on monkeys, and per his superior's orders, the focus is on military uses--the monkey is being virtual reality trained in battle strategy while they're manipulating its aggression levels. As anyone who has seen at least two or three genre films could guess, this ends up backfiring. The monkey freaks out and runs rampant through the secret government facility, attacking employees.
Dr. Angelo semi-voluntarily goes on hiatus. He had wanted to eventually test human subjects for susceptibility to his virtual reality "mind expansion", without the emphasis on violence, but that seems a lost cause. However, after his wife leaves him, he decides that maybe he can do the research on his own. He decides that the perfect test subject is the titular lawnmower man--his neighbor Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey). Jobe happens to be developmentally disabled. Of course, things do not go exactly as planned with the tests on Jobe, either, especially once The Shop gets wind of what Dr. Angelo is doing.
The Lawnmower Man grew out of a Stephen King short story that most famously appeared in his Night Shift collection. The King story is only a few pages long, and it bears almost no resemblance to the film. The only scene that's at all similar is the one involving a lawn mower and Peter Parkette's (Austin O'Brien) father. It might be informative for those who have a less than consistently favorable opinion of King-oriented films to note that King sued to have any reference to his name removed. I actually like most King-oriented films, but I find the suit amusing, too.
What makes The Lawnmower Man such a trainwreck? The most prominent problem, because it is such a focus of the film, is the CGI. When Dr. Angelo is working with human subjects in The Shop's facilities, they wear "spiffy" spandex suits reminiscent of Tron (1982). That may be enough of a problem in itself (and just who made those suits if Dr. Angelo had never been authorized to work with humans?), but the bigger problem is that the CGI is also reminiscent of Tron. That's not to say that Tron isn't successful, but it had very primitive CGI. There, it was more excusable for three reasons. One, it was made in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when CGI _had_ to be much more primitive. Two, realizing this, Tron director Steven Lisberger aimed at creating more of a minimalist world. And three, once introduced to us, most of Tron took place in that world.
By the early 1990s, computer graphics had progressed quite a bit. Yet, Leonard allows The Lawnmower Man's CGI sequences to almost exclusively consist of brightly colored, low-resolution, simple geometric shapes floating around in a featureless world. Admittedly, The Lawnmower Man was a bit low-budgeted. But I'm not sure that excuses computer graphics that look like they were done on a Commodore 64 by someone working through a basic pixel animation book. And this stuff is supposed to "accelerate the evolution of the human mind?" It wouldn't matter so much if this were not the crux of the film. But the CGI is as important here as the scenes inside The Matrix are to that film. The effects work a bit better when they're integrated with cinematography. But Leonard avoids that more than he should.
And the CGI isn't the only problem. The story otherwise is extremely awkward. Most of it is unintentionally absurdist. Jobe lives in a little shack in an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood. A sadistic priest regularly flogs him. A beautiful widow seduces him. Peter's family is almost a spoof of the typical King family, with an abusive, alcoholic father. All of these people bizarrely live right next door to Dr. Angelo. I could go on and on, but there isn't room.
Still, there are aspects of the story that work. When Leonard finally gets around to death scenes, they're pretty good. The suspense stuff when Dr. Angelo is in Washington is good. And the overall arc about Jobe transforming, but getting out of control and seeking revenge is enjoyable, pithy and certainly a classic, archetypal plot. But this isn't anything if it's not a mixed bag. Watch expecting a trainwreck, and you should be entertained for an evening.
This effect-laden sci-fi horror film looked pretty impressive back in 1992. But of course times move on, and such movies have a tendency to look dated quicker than most as technology marches on to new levels. I guess The Lawnmower Man is one of these films. But in fairness, it can be quite fun to look back at old special effects and see what was cutting edge back in the day. In truth, today if you were to give a 12 year old child a computer game with graphics similar to those in The Lawnmower Man, that child would turn around and laugh in your face. Such is the speed of computer technology. So yes, The Lawnmower Man no longer looks cutting-edge but neither does it look terrible, its effects work within themselves and are only occasionally atrocious, such as the burning priest.
As most people already know, the story is about a simpleton who is turned into a genius via virtual reality technology. The side effect of this method is that it turns the, otherwise good natured man into an insane evil psychotic.
The Lawnmower Man is neither a particularly good film, nor an especially bad one. There's certainly nothing special here, and the effects were by far its chief selling point. Without them this would almost certainly be a forgotten B-movie. Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey are reasonable enough in their roles, but they were always going to play second fiddle to the CGI. At the heart of it all it's a simple clichéd story that doesn't really hold very many surprises to be perfectly honest. But it's still quite good fun in a silly kind of a way.
As most people already know, the story is about a simpleton who is turned into a genius via virtual reality technology. The side effect of this method is that it turns the, otherwise good natured man into an insane evil psychotic.
The Lawnmower Man is neither a particularly good film, nor an especially bad one. There's certainly nothing special here, and the effects were by far its chief selling point. Without them this would almost certainly be a forgotten B-movie. Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey are reasonable enough in their roles, but they were always going to play second fiddle to the CGI. At the heart of it all it's a simple clichéd story that doesn't really hold very many surprises to be perfectly honest. But it's still quite good fun in a silly kind of a way.
I saw this shortly after its theatrical release and for years that was the only version of this story that I knew. It was campy, felt King-ish (despite King removing his name from the production) and had some interesting story elements. Then and now I can't escape the fact that the plot seems lifted directly from Flowers for Algernon set in what was at the time cutting edge CGI. The only thing missing from the "stolen" plot is the human science experiment (Jobe) losing his recently gained super-intelligence. In this flick, he becomes evil and unpredictable - but predictably so.
After a nostalgia viewing of the Director's Cut I can say that the restored footage makes a big difference in fleshing out the story. The original theatrical cut was a complete shitshow compared to the extended version. Angelo's girlfriend in particular became a whole character and some formerly missing scenes really helped the movie's overall cohesion. However, none of the restored scenes take away from some truly trite plot elements and wooden acting, particularly in nearly every role associated with "The Shop." Brosnan is decent, perhaps a bit overdoing the petulant scientist genius but Fahey's portrayal of Jobe is still very good. The transformation of his character from dolt to cyber god always struck me as well done and it holds up. Still unexplained in any adequate detail is the relationship with Dr. Angelo's neighbors.
The CGI, as mentioned in other reviews, is laughable in the modern day. Setting that aside, the themes explored in the movie still seem relevant and frankly I'd love an updated telling that incorporates contemporary sensibilities and more cohesive storytelling. Worth a watch - if you temper your expectations. After all, this was a 90s take on technology's implications, an idea that could have been great but suffered too much from corporate editing and profit goals in its native time.
After a nostalgia viewing of the Director's Cut I can say that the restored footage makes a big difference in fleshing out the story. The original theatrical cut was a complete shitshow compared to the extended version. Angelo's girlfriend in particular became a whole character and some formerly missing scenes really helped the movie's overall cohesion. However, none of the restored scenes take away from some truly trite plot elements and wooden acting, particularly in nearly every role associated with "The Shop." Brosnan is decent, perhaps a bit overdoing the petulant scientist genius but Fahey's portrayal of Jobe is still very good. The transformation of his character from dolt to cyber god always struck me as well done and it holds up. Still unexplained in any adequate detail is the relationship with Dr. Angelo's neighbors.
The CGI, as mentioned in other reviews, is laughable in the modern day. Setting that aside, the themes explored in the movie still seem relevant and frankly I'd love an updated telling that incorporates contemporary sensibilities and more cohesive storytelling. Worth a watch - if you temper your expectations. After all, this was a 90s take on technology's implications, an idea that could have been great but suffered too much from corporate editing and profit goals in its native time.
