I had not seen this since its initial release in 1992. I decided to give it a re-watch for old times sake. Boy, some things don’t age well do they? Lawmower Man was a film based on a short story by Stephen King. After King saw how they butchered his story and saw how bad this film was going to turn out, he sued and asked for his name to be removed from the film. Was King right? Did the film suck the big one? Well the story is interesting enough. A mentally challenged gardener named Jobe (and affectionately called “the Lawnmower Man” by the townsfolk) is chosen by the local genius scientist Dr. Angelo, to participate in a series of experiments involving cyberspace and virtual reality that could help make him smarter and snap out of his mental disability. Jobe starts to experience a few changes….he becomes smarter…and more violent.
The main problem with this movie is the dated effects. This movie boasted that it had the “best special fx since Terminator 2″…ha! What a lie. It was just a ploy to sucker you in to seeing this half assed flick. Yeah, I said half assed because at times some of the effects are less then impressive. Terminator 2s effects still look good by todays standards. Not so with The Lawnmower Mans computer generated images.
Some of the effects are alright for the time they were made I guess. Those scenes involving Jobe and Dr. Angelo in cyberspace are mildly interesting, but when compared to todays effects seem very very low key. Less then something you’d see on a video game. The character Jobe, once he goes into cyberspace becomes this slow moving, slow talking character. Wait, wasn’t he supposed to be more powerful in cyberspace? Well, I guess we can chalk that down to the fact that the computer effects were just starting out back in the day. Some of them were pulled of rather nicely (like those with Jobe saying “I am God here!” that was cool!) but other times being just plain bad.
Not only that, but the effects come off as uneven. Sometimes they’d use computer graphics, in others they’d use real film footage made out to look like computer graphics….it just gave the film a very uneven look. One of the most poorly executed effects for example is a swarm of digitized bees attacking a bunch of security guards. A bunch of blurry white circles moving around? Thats supposed to come of as a swarm of killer bees? And when they show the bees in close up…oh god, they look even worse! So yeah, the biggest problem here is that when Jobe goes rogue, well the effects that go with his killing spree just make the killings laughable. And that my friends is not good in a horror movie.
Anyhows, what holds this film together is two things: the acting from Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey and the story. Yeah, Pierce Brosnan pulled off Dr. Angelo very well. And Jeff Faheys portrayal of the mentally challenged Lawnmower man was alright…but Ill admit some of his acting as the Lawnmower Man in his “dumb” phase didn’t do it for me, I don’t know there’s just something about actors portraying mentally challenged people that I find sort of insulting or disrespectful, but thats just me. I preferred Jeff Fahey a lot more as the mean and smart Lawnmower Man. Some of his lines are excellent.
And the story well, it pulls you in. Even though its sort of a mess at times, you can see that Kings influence is all over it. Specially when it comes to presenting the characters of the small town and when it focuses on Jobe and his life as a slight less less smarter member of the human race. King always does a good job of fleshing out characters and you can see that here.
Its a halfway enjoyable film but unfortunately its full enjoyment is held back because of its limited, dated and poorly executed special effects. I wonder what a remake of this film would look like today? Now heres a movie in need of a remake if there ever was one! Hollywood listen up!
