Hulkeasexo
it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.
Gurlyndrobb
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
filippaberry84
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Michael Ledo
Jeff Fahey plays an unconvincing idiot being experimented upon by Pierce Brosnan. The graphics as well as his suit comes from Tron. Fahey acquires superhuman powers from doing chemicals and playing video games (I tried to tell mom that was okay.) He then gets a god complex and thinks he is Gary Mitchell from Star Trek's "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as the movie moves from an interesting science fiction film to a "B" movie.Sex, brief nudity, and the F-bomb. Rest in Peace James R. Kirk.
rzajac
It's a bit 'B', a bit dated, but with redeemable characteristics. Some of the writing is pretty good. The direction was hammy, but at least the tone is managed well, over-all. Dr. Angelo's character is given a little berth to pass off as a realistic character; this invites us to identify with him as a "voice of reason" in a cartoonish sci-fi universe.Of course, the whole thing uses the misunderstood tech trope of the year, "virtual reality", boosted by mind-altering drugs, as a hook for yet-another story about man's effort to cosmically transcend. This is a strained notion, as any technically savvy dude or dudette knows. So the whole thing rides on a willing suspension of disbelief. The question remains whether this act of suspension rewards us with a sustainable, ennobling myth.Well, my attempt to give the flick a slight jolt by voting it a '7' is an indicator. The flick is surely dated, but not bad for its time. Where the story fails to fully ennoble, it at least maintains a sense of momentum; I found it quite watchable.At the very least, it worth watching as a heroic effort by the producers to mythically bend new (at the time) tech toward a moral fable about humankind's perennial tech hubris expressed as yet-another effort to bite off more than can reasonably be chewed.I was particularly struck by an interesting form taken by the usual story-management effort to keep Dr. Angelo's karma clean: That the dosing of his human subject with the "next-stage" experimental drugs was effected without his knowledge, via subterfuge by admins; not by the researcher (Angelo) himself. Very clever plot point, that!Anyway. It's not a great flick, but may be worth watching as a kind of worthy period piece. It's a bit of an aesthetic casualty of the 'B'-flick hewings of production folks of the time: If you factor that out, you can see the glimmerings of decent sci-fi.
view_and_review
The Shop is at it again. Who is The Shop? The same clandestine government organization that was responsible for the Firestarter. Their goal is the same though the technology is slightly different: create a weapon from a human subject.The Lawnmower Man was Flowers for Algernon mixed with Tron. Dr. Angelo (Pierce Brosnan) developed a drug and virtual reality technique to increase intelligence. After his experiments failed with a chimp he decided to tweak things a bit and try again on Jobe (Jeff Fahey), a mentally challenged lawnmower man. The experiments worked to increase Jobe's intelligence but it also awakened another side of him as well.Initially I was attributing this movie to Stephen King, but after reading more on this site I found that Stephen King sued because this movie had almost nothing to do with his self-same titled short. I watched this initially in the early 90's and wasn't impressed. In the attempts to be futuristic Lawnmower Man came off as cheesy. In their attempts to apply virtual reality technology and effects on screen it made for terrible graphics. I know that virtual reality was all the buzz in the early 90's as we were rapidly progressing in the computer field as a people, but the graphics and special effects were still a ways off. What were supposed to be riveting, scary or jaw dropping scenes-were no more than cartoonish. I'm not saying this because CGI today is so breathtakingly real, I mean even in 1992 this movie never moved the needle on the scales. Consider that in 1991 we had T2 which was revolutionary as far as on screen effects, and in '93 (a year after Lawnmower Man) we were treated to Jurassic Park, another titan in the CGI department.The movie ended with an opening for a part 2 (which was done though I never saw it) but why? It would seem that a remake would make this movie so much better but the concept of virtual reality yet again wouldn't go over well. That drum has been beat too many times I'm afraid it's lost its effect.
Spikeopath
The Lawnmower Man is directed by Brett Leonard who also co-writes the screenplay with Gimel Everett. It stars Pierce Brosnan, Jeff Fahey, Jenny Wright, Geoffrey Lewis, Jeremy Slate and Dean Norris. Music is by Dan Wyman and cinematography by Russell Carpenter.Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Brosnan) is a big mover in the science of virtual reality. When he tries his new technology on mentally challenged gardener Jobe Smith (Fahey), it elevates him to a higher intelligence and it's not long before Jobe acquires scary new powers…Originally meant to be, and titled as, Stephen King's Lawnmower Man, the film eventually, after a King lawsuit, ended up bearing very little resemblance to the author's short story. There's a couple of small ligaments that link the two, but in the main (not Maine) this Lawnmower Man is its own entity and an obvious attempt to cash in on the then virtual reality zeitgeist.Lawnmower Man has a cult fan base, of that there is no doubt, where much like Tron from 10 years earlier, the effects work and the capturing of something very much being "in" with the youth of the time, has proved perpetually appealing to nostalgists. But strip away these and you have your basic Frankenstein story for the 90s, a pretty standard story lacking intelligent smarts or deep thematic points of worth. And then of course there is the bizarre fact of having a film decrying the advancement of computer technology, by using computer technology to make the film's strongest moments! Hee. It's only adequately performed by the cast, and Leonard's direction matches his writing, which is mundane when not about the visual effects; effects work that dated very quickly as it happened.Other cuts and sequels would follow, the former didn't improve the same basic problems of the theatrical cut, the latter releases proved to be laughably bad. The Lawnmower Man, an interesting movie in the context of its time, and certainly fun enough for those who were there cloaked in a visually inspired warm glow, but it has not been a must see film for anyone else since 1995. 4/10
