Back in the glorious 90s, when kids still enjoyed linear TV, we had Polsat. In the post-communist Poland, this was the first western TV station. Filled with western movies, and western series1 Among those, there were constant replays of The Lawnmower Man2 I watched it on every occasion and loved it.
Now, 30 years later it is time for a rewatch. No cyberpunk deep dive can be considered a good one without The Lawnmower Man.
The Lawnmower Man is a movie about a disabled lawnmower man, Jobe, who, with the usage of virtual reality, becomes a genius. Soon after, an Evil Company, stars secretly giving him drugs contracted by the military. And as result, he starts exhibiting mind reading abilities and telekinesis (because, obviously, why not?). We’ve got the (popular at the time) subtext about the dangers of corporates who, without supervision, play God. Somehow we stopped doing that, and now we’ve got Altman killing humanity with the clap of happy crowd. Lawmower Man is a movie about a great technology twisted by corporate overlords. Fitting.
Jobe becomes a psychic, genius killer (like every mad genius), who decides to take over the cyberspace.
The movie was initially released as a Stephen King movie. King, however, sued the producers, as the movie has nothing to do the short story of the same name. And he won, because it was based on original script called CyberGod. Damn, I miss cyber sounding cool. They should have the original name, instead of forcing King on everyone. And yes, I know King was the king back then.
The movie is we have here is a much dumbed down version of Flowers for Algeron, which I intend to finally read. I don’t think anyone ever called it a good movie, and for a good reason. It’s cool, it’s got great cyberspace CGI, it’s got Pierce Brosnan. It also has an opening scene with a monkey using a gun, so yeah.
Story-wise is as straight forward as it gets. The first half is full of sweet shots of grass and sexualization of a lawnmower. And the most awkward sex scene I’ve seen in ages… or two. Then, through a heavy-handed comment about religion and corporations we go the killing part.
This movie fails as horror (there is not even blood or any scare here), and fails as morality play (it’s not smart enough). But it is a testament to the glorious time, when cyberspace was magical and full of potential. We sure deserve more of that.
I give it a 3.0/5.
I was sure the ending of this film was from the sequel. But nope - I don’t remember anything from the second one. Therefore, see you on the other side, Beyond Cyberspace.
If anything, it’s a great movie to show everyone how amazing trackballs are. And we all know it is a fact. No one can tell me otherwise.
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And Polish version of those. We had a great copy of The Honeymooners named Miodowe Lata. The translation of the title is surprisingly spot-on. ↩︎
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Under an amazingly translated title, which would translate back as The Lawmower Man of Minds. Perfection. We knew Dirty Dancing as Spinning Sex and Die Hard as Glass Trap. Those were simpler times. ↩︎