The Lawnmower Man (1992) New Line/Sci-Fi-Horror RT: 142 minutes (Director’s Cut) Rated R (language, violence, sex and nudity) Director: Brett Leonard Screenplay: Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett Music: Dan Wyman Cinematography: Russell Carpenter Release date: March 6, 1992 (US) Cast: Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan, Jenny Wright, Mark Bringelson, Geoffrey Lewis, Jeremy Slate, Dean Norris, John Laughlin, Colleen Coffey, Troy Evans, Rosalee Mayeux, Austin O’Brien, Ray Lykins, Michael Gregory, Joe Hart, Jim Landis. Box Office: $32.1M (US)/$150M (World)
Rating: ** ½
The movie The Lawnmower Man is NOT an adaptation of the Stephen King short story of the same name. The only thing the two have in common (besides the title) is a scene where the main character murders somebody with a lawnmower he’s controlling with his mind. The rest of the film is an original screenplay by Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett called Cyber God. Because of this, King successfully sued to have his name removed from the credits. Now here’s the weird part. There is an element from a different King story in the movie; namely, the sinister government outfit The Shop who would later appear in Firestarter. Predictably, they’re up to no good.
Directed by co-writer Leonard (Virtuosity), The Lawnmower Man is a high-tech version of Flowers for Algernon (adapted into the 1968 film Charly) with its story of a mentally disabled guy undergoing experimental treatments to make him smarter. I saw it at the end of a very busy Saturday in which I saw three other films- Once Upon a Crime, Blame It on the Bellboy and Gladiator- before catching a late show with a group of friends at the now-closed AMC Granite Run 8. Like many non-tech savvy folks, I never heard of virtual reality prior to viewing The Lawnmower Man. I bumped into an acquaintance in the lobby who gave me a quick rundown of VR before the movie started. Armed with a better understanding of the new-to-me concept, I took my seat just before the previews started.
The version of The Lawnmower Man released to theaters ran 108 minutes. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the film did seem rather choppy. Prior to release, New Line cut it down to attract larger audiences. People are less likely to buy tickets to a movie that runs close to two and a half hours. I guess it worked to a degree as it turned a small profit ($32.1M against a production cost of $10M). The reviews weren’t great or even good. I thought it was okay. I liked the special effects, but was unimpressed with everything else. It played like a high-tech low-budget horror movie. It had the same cheap feel as 976-EVIL.
Dr. Lawrence Angelo (future James Bond star Brosnan), fresh off the failure of “Project 5” after the test subject, a chimp named Roscoe, escaped from the lab and got gunned down by security forces, decides to conduct further experiments outside the lab and away from The Shop. He recruits Jobe Smith (Fahey, Body Parts), a mentally challenged gardener everybody calls “Lawnmower Man”, to be his new guinea pig. He wants to use a combination of VR and psychoactive drugs to increase his intelligence. It works. Soon he’s reading and driving and having sex with the hot neighborhood slut (Wright, Near Dark).
Naturally, there are side effects. Jobe develops superhuman abilities- i.e. telekinesis and reading minds. He becomes more aggressive and eventually goes psycho. He goes after everybody who mistreated him in the past like his abusive caretaker Father McKeen (Slate, The Mini-Skirt Mob) and the abusive father (Lykins) of his best friend, a 10YO boy named Peter (O’Brien, Last Action Hero). His ultimate plan is to shed his physical body and become a god-like being in the cyber universe. Dr. Angelo has to find a way to stop him.
In my not-at-all humble opinion, the FX in The Lawnmower Man still look good. They’re right up there with TRON (1982). I’m aware that they’re regarded as cheesy and outdated by today’s standards, but I’m not all that enamored by CGI as you all know. I think there’s a lot to be said for old school effects work. It took a lot of hard work to transfer CGI to film for The Lawnmower Man. It was a new process at the time. It still had a few bugs in it. Overall, the artists and techs did a good job.
The movie itself is just okay. It has an interesting story to tell. It also has something to say about technology and using it responsibly. A subplot has The Shop looking to weaponize Angelo’s work. They want to use his research to create super-soldiers. When he tries to go out of his own, they have somebody sabotage his experiments with Jobe. When Angelo realizes what they’ve done, he sets out to shut it all down. This should have been the focus of the story. Instead, it meanders around a lot before getting to the point which results in noticeable pacing issues.
The acting in The Lawnmower Man is pretty bad all around. Brosnan underplays it to the point of barely being present. Fahey overacts without shame. The same goes for Slate. Wright’s character is like somebody from a soft porn fantasy. O’Brien, in his first role, is okay. He’s not all that different from any other child star of the 90s.
The Lawnmower Man isn’t a complete failure. It has its good points. It has its flaws. To its credit, it’s much better than the 1996 sequel. I don’t mind revisiting it every now and then. It’s an interesting reminder of what tech looked like then. It’s eerie when you consider what tech can do now with AI taking over far more than it should. What we can do now with tech is scarier than anything Stephen King could have imagined. I’ll take a mind-operated lawnmower any day.
