The Lawnmower Man

1992 science fiction wackiness

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Remington Steele's been experimenting with the use of virtual reality and Hi-C Ecto-Cooler to make monkeys smarter. Of course, the government wants to use this super-intelligence to boost our military strength. After his monkey tries to escape, Remington decides it's time for a hiatus, but he knows he can have more success with a human subject.

Funny story: I saw this movie in a theater, and midway through, I spilled my popcorn on the floor and had a seizure but not in that order. I woke up, six days later if you believe my watch, and realized I was missing my kidney. I've never discovered who took my kidney or what he's doing with it, but the authorities ended the investigation after a twenty-five minute search for the culprit. A couple years ago, I had a pain in my lower back and went to the doctor. The doctor told me he needed to "get in there," and during surgery found that my kidney had been replaced with a Matchbox car, a little cement truck with a plastic mixer that spun around. When I awoke after the surgery, the doctor was standing by my hospital bed, kind of standing in a gay way I thought, holding the miniature dump truck. "You," he said to me in a very sanitized voice, "must have seen The Lawnmower Man."

The Lawnmower Man is a movie that manages to look dumber than Tron even though it was released ten years after that Disney classic. I think some of the costumes were even pinched from the Disney warehouses (the Tron section) for use in The Lawnmower Man. The poster claims this is based on a Stephen King short story, but I've read that story (in fact, it's the only story I've ever read) and it's about a guy who eats grass. Saying this story is based on the Steven King story is like saying Shark Tale is based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Jeff Fahey is silly as the title character although he does stretch his acting chops a bit to play both a guy who looks too stupid to get a role in Dumb and Dumber and a vengeful hyper-intelligent computerized version of himself. Fahey's character is also in one of the more interesting sex scenes I've ever seen, a scene where he and the town slut get it on a virtual world. She begins to get a little uncomfortable, but the lawnmower man tells her, "I know what you really want." He then turns into this giant puking frog thing who spews red stuff on her. What? That's what she really wanted? Pierce Brosnan's also embarrassed to be in this movie (I imagine) and looks as lost as I was as he floats through jellybean advertisements and listens to lines like "Once I've entered the neural net, my birth cry will be the sound of every telephone in the world ringing at the same time." I also really enjoyed these lines:

1) "He was the best chimp I've ever had."

2) "Can we play cyber boogie today?"

3) "Whoa! That was sketched!"

4) "He was probably dancing with the booze lady."

5) "The first sign of psychosis is a Christ complex."

Those were paraphrased. The Lawnmower Man must be an embarrassment to anybody involved in the production. As a futuristic (now very dated) action update on Flowers for Algernon, this thing utterly fails.