The Lawnmower Man and The Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War (or Beyond Cyberspace)

The Man Who Mows Lawns is a strange sci-fi drama about a computer programmer (Pierce Brosnan (Mamma Mia!)) that turns a simpleton (Jeff Fahey (Psycho III)) into a genius.  But his creation gets too smart and develops telekinetic powers.  It’s a bit horror-ish but not enough to be classified as such nor is it your typical thriller.  It kinda does its own thing.

All of the Frankenstein’s monster stuff works well.  Pierce plays a pretty arrogant dude but at the same time he doesn’t want mow man to hurt people or fall into the wrong hands (Dean Norris of Hard to Kill fame…and Breaking Bad).  So you end up on his side even though he shouldn’t be conducting dangerous mind altering experiments.  The guy he picks to transform, Jobe, is a retarded grown man that’s constantly abused by a priest.  They never hint that it’s sexual but it’s an interesting angle to have Jobe be beaten and forced to say penances.  Fahey’s portrayal is kinda hammy and oversimplified but you still feel for him.

I guess I sorta get the connection between intelligence and telekinesis.  It’s because you’re supposed to be using more of your brain, right?  You’ve unlocked its hidden potential?  Whatever, it’s a way to move the plot along.  In fact if that aspect didn’t exist then there wouldn’t be a second half of the movie.

The 90’s computer shit is plentiful with early ugly CGI and impossible leaps.  Like the lawnmower man is able to actually be absorbed into the computer world leaving only a dehydrated carcass behind.  There’s also a test monkey that uses goggles with x-ray vision.  It gets smarter too but goes berserk in a more traditional fashion.  While the lawnmower man sets people ablaze with digital fire and uses his mind controlled mower to murder dudes, the monkey simply steals a gun and shoots some folks.  If the monkey got to the telekinesis phase I wonder what types of deaths it would’ve inflicted on people.  Death by banana peel?  Death by autoeroticism?  Now that’s an idea for a movie if I ever heard one.     

One death in particular makes no sense.  Jobe turns some bad guys into…uh…computer graphics bits?  And then for some reason the ex-human pieces float away.  I really don’t get what they were going for.  It’s not scary or interesting or even confirmation of death.  These two guys become computer-y and then they’re just gone.  It’s almost not weird enough to be truly bizarre.

Director Brett Leonard loves this cyber stuff and I think it shows.  He takes the technology in his films seriously which makes them more absurd but also more enjoyable.  If the movie presents the scenario that a dimwit can become so smart overnight that he develops telekinetic powers with a straight face then I’ll be on board for the most part.

You know what I just realized?  The Lawnmower Man and Leonard’s other semi-well known movie, Virtuosity, have the exact opposite plot.  Jobe wants to transport himself into the computer world and have every human jacked into him.  Russell Crowe from Virtuosity wants to transplant himself into the real world and create chaos.  Virtuosity is the much better picture though.  It’s not incredible or nothin’ but it sure is a lot of fun.  

Anyway, if you’re a big 90’s computer movie person then this is pretty much a must see.  If you’re any other type of movie person there’s not enough here besides the dumb computer shit.

Surprisingly a sequel was made.  Although, the Mow 2 script was obviously something else before someone said “we gotta jump on the Lawnmower Man bandwagon while it’s hot!  People are still raving about it four years later right?”

The story has very little to do with the first but they did bring back Jobe’s eleven year old friend Peter (Austin O’Brien (Last Action Hero)) to share the lead with Patrick Bergin (Patriot Games).  This one has something to do with Jobe trying to take over the world via virtual reality and the internet…again. 

The reason this is so different from the original is that Jobe is the villain from the start and it takes place in “the future”.  And when they say “the future” they mean it.  Everyone’s jacking into VR (virtual reality), there are inverted monorails going everywhere, LA looks like the burnt out Blade Runner version of the city, there are video phones in cars, etc.  I’ll totally buy all this shit, including the minidiscs.  There’s just one tiny problem though.  If Peter was eleven in the first one and fifteen in part 2 then that means the entire world was completely transformed, from computers to guns to everything, in four fucking years.  I mean why?  Why did this have to take place so soon after the first?  I get the connection of the Peter character but that association isn’t integral to the plot.  The real question is: did nobody realize this, or did nobody care?

Production wise the filmmakers did a very good job.  This doesn’t feel like it’s as low budget as I’m sure it really is.  The whole thing is very competently put together and the score is anything you would find in an A picture at the time.  It’s shot well too with varied camera angles and some good framing.  Unfortunately most of the action sequences are awkward, made up of mostly close ups (ahead of its time on that) and they’re all poorly choreographed (if at all).  But hats off to director Farhad Mann (uhh…he did some episodes of Pamela Anderson’s V.I.P., that’s the best I got) and his crew for making this look way more like a big budget film than anyone could’ve expected.

So the sequel was sorta enjoyable.  Not a ton but at least you can watch it without having to digest the first, if you ever wanted to do that.

One last interesting bit is that this movie predicted the iphone.  There’s a scene where the evil CEO of the company that Jobe works for tells the President to “don your eyephones”.  The Pres then puts on his virtual reality sunglasses.  See, The Lawnmower Man 2 totally called it guys.