Lawmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)

Fun fact: I remembered close to nothing about this movie back. When I was watching the first, everything seems familiar. Here? Not so much. Guess Polsat consider the second one too expensive for regular broadcast.

In Lawnmawer Man¹ we meet Jobe, now a genius being living in the cyberspace. But not so much, because in the first few minutes of Lawmnower Man 2 we learn that he has not left his meatsuit for the cyberspace. The explosion at the lab left him an amputee. But his talents are now in use of the Evil Corporation designing the future of cyberspace.

Of course, Jobe wants the cyberspace for himself.

The general plot seems similar to the first one, but they are very much different. The plot is much more complex, there are many more explosions and I think it makes much less sense than the first one. I would rate it at 2/5.

But the biggest difference is that this movie is target towards certain audience. Lawmower Man was a kid-friendly horror. Lawmower Man 2 is a kids’ movie. They completely removed the part which tried to be scary.

We’ve got bunch od kids (and a dog) fighting and winning against a grown-up. Yes, they get the help from an adult - the creator of cyberspace. But the main heroes are the kids. And the main target are the kids.

I’ve read that the director was locked out of the editing room as he was trying to make a different movie. The producers said a firm “no” and made Lawmower Man 2 close to the likes of Goonies, Explorers or Flight of the Navigator. It never reaches the coolness of those, but it tries. A lot of people on the interweb bash the movie on logical problems or being goofy. Yes - occasionally the plot makes so little sense that they needed to add voice over explaining why the hell the gang is going where they are going. Yes, it has a dog who saves the day. 38 years old me was not amused, but the 10-year-old inside me screamed “yeah! Radical!”. He was not doing well with being modern back then as well.

Jobe is being played by Matt Frewer, who quite often acts like Jim Carey, which is fitting. He is not the magical-killer he used to be. He is goofy.

Even the music sounds like something Spielberg would use.

There is no Pierce Brosnan here, as only Austin O’Brien returns from the first one, once again reprising the role of Peter Parkette.

My biggest gripe is the special effect here. The movie takes place in the future, so we’re no longer seeing green grass. The real world vibe is close to Blade Runner or Dark City. I dig it!

But then there is the cyberspace. In Lawmower Man we had amazing, early CGI closer to an acid trip than anything else. Here, the cyberspace looks like ours. They just added CGI here and there. It looks like an episode of The Next Generation, but without most of the campiness. For the most part it is competent, but there is no spark. It’s not cool.

But the 10-year-old me would not care. He would rate it as 3.75/5 or “that was cool!”. But he he wasn’t picky at all.