by Anthony O’Connor
Worth: Discs: 3, The Film: 3/5, The Extras: 3.5/5, Overall: 6.5/10
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Pierce Brosnan, Jeff Fahey, Jenny Wright, Geoffrey Lewis, Jeremy Slate, Dean Norris, Austin O'Brien, Patrick Bergin, Matt Frewer
Intro:
… those who suckled on the cathode ray teat three decades ago, and want to try to recapture that buzzy feeling, may want to log in.
The Film:
It was a weird time for Stephen King fans in the 1990s. Movie adaptations from the Maine man’s oeuvre veered wildly in quality. In the 1980s, there were deadset bangers like The Shining (1980), Creepshow (1982), The Dead Zone (1983), Stand By Me (1986) and Pet Sematary (1989), however in the ‘90s the pickings were decidedly slimmer. You had stuff like Sleepwalkers (1992), an admittedly very entertaining but trashy flick about incestuous energy vampires who are profoundly allergic to cats, or The Graveyard Shift (1990), a decidedly B-grade yarn about killer rats. There were also four (FOUR!) Children of the Corn sequels. All that said, the weirdest King-related artifact of the 1990s is undoubtedly 1992’s The Lawnmower Man, a film that bore such a scant resemblance to the source material that Stephen King sued the studio and won! But backstory aside, is The Lawnmower Man and its sequel The Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, a good watch in this dark year of technology, 2026?
First things first, The Lawnmower Man short story is a slight, approximately ten page yarn about a bloke who hires a tradie to fix his lawn. Said tradie arrives, strips naked and his red lawnmower does its job solo (as if by magic) while the starkers fella follows behind, eating the lawn clippings. It’s all in the service of the great God Pan or somesuch nonsense and the whole thing feels like a bit of a pisstake that King dashed off on his lunchbreak.
So, naturally, the movie is all about virtual reality.
The Lawnmower Man (movie) tells the tale of simple, goodhearted Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey), an intellectually disabled gardener who does the lawns of mad scientist, Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan). Doctor Larry’s been having a bit of a tough run of late, with the chimp he’s been training to be hyper intelligent getting gunned down after escaping his lab. Desperate to continue his work, the good doctor decides to use his revolutionary VR + chemical treatments on a very willing, wide-eyed Jobe. At first, things go well: Jobe becomes more intelligent and perceptive and he learns to run a comb through his hair, making him look slightly less like Trey Parker from BASEketball. He also manages to pull local hottie Marnie (an insanely gorgeous Jenny Wright). However, along with the big brains comes the inevitable evil, and Jobe soon exhibits sociopathic tendencies, taking revenge on those who have wronged him and using his psychokinesis (!) and telepathy (!!!) to cause all manner of havoc.
Now, if that brief plot description sounds like a lot, believe us when we tell you we haven’t even scratched the surface. The Lawnmower Man, while stunningly goofy at times, piles a whole lot of disparate plot tropes into its narrative blender and puts the power on high. You can’t help but admire its sheer chutzpah as it deals with government conspiracies, mind control, virtual reality as another dimension and a half dozen other concepts it in no way satisfyingly addresses, but crams in regardless.
Co-writer/director Brett Leonard (Hideaway, Virtuosity) has created a speculative sci-fi film whose speculation has proven to be utterly incorrect. In fact, the only person who has been more wrong about the spread of VR is Mark Zuckerberg. That said, The Lawnmower Man is genuinely a very entertaining film. Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey are both terrific in their respective roles and the early CGI is kind of adorable in retrospect. The film also looks fantastic, with both the theatrical and director’s cut appearing very slick indeed. Is it nonsense? Absolutely. Its trousers are very much on its head, and yet for all that, it’s a damn good time.
The same, sadly, cannot be said about its sequel The Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace. Look, to be kind, we’ll say this: The Lawnmower Man 2 doesn’t lack ambition. Set in a weird retro-futuristic cyberpunk Los Angeles, Lawny 2 retcons the first film’s excellent ending and has Matt Frewer playing Jobe Smith now. Jobe’s new plan for world domination is both convoluted and stupid, and the whole film plays out like a low budget riff on Neuromancer starring the Lost Boys from Peter Pan shot on some leftover sets from Blade Runner, with endless scenes of incoherent techno-drivel and hilariously bad special effects, digital and practical. It’s a mess of a thing that never achieves lift off and exists more as a curiosity or cautionary tale, a dire warning against unnecessary thematically inconsistent sequels. Good thing we stopped making those kinds of films, eh, guys? Guys?
The Extras:
A moderate, although by no means definitive little collection of extras here. There’s an audio commentary from director Brett Leonard and producer Gimel Everett. There are deleted scenes, edited animated sequences with original music, behind-the-scenes gear, production stills, trailers etc.
The jewel here, however, is the full length documentary Cyber God: Creating ‘The Lawnmower Man’ which is a very engaging, and quite exhaustive, look at the making of the flick from conception to release. The cast and crew come off very well, and Leonard in particular seems passionate and articulate.
The Lawnmower Man 2, however, contains zero extras other than a trailer, probably because no one involved in that production wants to be reminded of its existence.
Verdict:
The Lawnmower Man is a terrible Stephen King adaptation, so much so that they had to remove his name from the film entirely. It is, however, a hilariously trashy, enjoyable B-movie that predicted the future with 0% accuracy but 100% chutzpah, doubling down on goofy concepts, silly ideas and general batshit lunacy. It’s followed by a wildly ambitious but woefully misjudged sequel that is probably best left in the ‘90s.
The pair of flicks come packaged in an attractive looking hardbox in a collector’s edition that won’t be for everyone. However, those who suckled on the cathode ray teat three decades ago, and want to try to recapture that buzzy feeling, may want to log in.
