MOVIE REVIEW: Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)

<<SPOILERS for The Lawnmower Man [1992] beyond this point; you have been warned.>>

Sequels can be a rough thing to pull off, as not every movie makes it clear they are set up to be anything but self-contained OR ended ambiguously for maximum storytelling effect. Ridley Scott’s Alien was always meant to be a self-contained science-fiction horror story. Then a James Cameron sequel turned it into a science-fiction action story, making it more accessible to audiences AND a trilogy treatment, expanding into a franchise that began to play loose with its own rules to accommodate plot holes from earlier entries. The same happened to The Exorcist and Saw movies, getting sillier with each entry.
I bring the idea of stand-alone movies versus expanding franchises up because 1992’s The Lawnmower Man was intended to be a stand-alone film with an ambiguous ending to Jobe’s fate: at the end Jobe escapes through an access backdoor into Cyberspace, leaving behind his living body to become a digital being capable of world domination. One thing was cut and dry about the ending — the lab was destroyed and so was Jobe’s body. Imagine my surprise when Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace was made…and the first thing they did was retcon Jobe’s death. Considering how crazy the last movie was, this probably means it’s going to be a race to the bottom.

EVIL CORPORATE AESTHETIC: Virtual Light Institute CEO Jonathan Walker and his personal assistant Jennifer laugh evilly over the Chiron chip, in the presence of artifacts most likely looted from UNESCO heritage sites.

Many years after the destruction of VSI Labs (the place where Jobe lived his first moments as a purely digital being), corporate scientists at VLI (Virtual Light Institute) worked on a tetrahedral computer chip called “Chiron” — one that would revolutionize the world. It was created by lead developer Dr. Benjamin Trace (Patrick Bergin, Gallowwalkers, Escape Velocity [1999], Patriot Games [1992]) who sought to use it in a positive application. VLI saw differently and sued him to steal the Chiron chip copyright. Dr. Trace, disgusted by his legal loss and the direction of humanity as guided by VLI, retreated to the desert to become a recluse. Humanity progressed into a strange dystopian world where they have flying cars and videophones, but poverty is rampant. It is on the mean streets of cyberpunk Los Angeles where we find an older Peter Parkette (Austin Taylor O’Brien, Apollo 13, “Promised Land” [TV-CBS]) — the boy from the first film.

LIVING THE DREAM: This is an optimistic representation of what we thought Cyberspace was supposed to be: flying and laughing with your friends and bright colors and simulated nature environments.

Peter lives on the street with his age-appropriate homeless 90’s computer hacker friends, scamming mild-mannered citizens out of digital cash and VR access codes to get into Cyberspace. With his girlfriend Jade (singer/actress Crystal Celeste Grant, Kids in America [2005]), her brother Travis (Sean P. Young, The Brothers [2001]) and their chubby friend Shawn (Patrick LaBrecque, Beethoven [1992], Backfield in Motion [1991], Heavyweights [1996]), they have a radical time dodging corporate agents and legitimate law enforcement. All that changes when Jobe (now played by sci-fi mainstay Matt Frewer, “Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future” [TV-Channel 4], “Mutant X” [TV movie-FOX], “The Stand” [TV miniseries-ABC]) suddenly pops up — seemingly back from the dead — in Cyberspace and asks his old friend for a favor: to find Dr. Trace before both Jobe and Cyberspace are destroyed.

CONTEMPLATING MY PYRAMID: Cyberspace Jobe marvels at the large-scale representation of the Chiron chip, AKA this movie’s MacGuffin.

This version of Jobe is pulling double-duty: in his first role, he is a dependent and unwilling slave for VLI: the CEO, Jonathan Walker (Kevin Conway, Black Knight [2001], Slaughterhouse-Five [1972], “Gettysburg” [1993, TV miniseries-TNT]) wants the missing info to complete the Chiron chip from Dr. Trace, and thinks he can bypass the information with Jobe. VLI spent billions getting Jobe back into Cyberspace — reconstructing his face, adding cybernetic interface components, healing his wounds —and even going so far as to house and feed him since he’s now a double amputee from the near-destruction of his body. When that plan fails, the CEO uses Dr. Cori Platt (Ely Pouget, Death Machine [1994], Curly Sue [1991], “Red Shoe Diaries” [TV-SHO]), a neuroscientist with a soft spot for hard-luck cases like Jobe, to redirect the crippled cyber-hacker’s efforts to a physical search for Dr. Trace. The goal is to use the Chiron chip to centralize all data under VLI control and render all other online systems obsolete, essentially giving VLI monopoly on the handling the world’s data.
In his other role, Jobe is building a kingdom in Cyberspace from which to digitally wage war on humanity in the real world. The Chiron chip is the final piece to his plan, using the greed and access of VLI to centralize the world’s data under HIS control. It’s up to our Rag-Tag Band of Heroes™ to beat the 12-hour clock to stop VLI and the returning digital dictator Jobe from destroying the real world.

MINIDISC FUTURE: For some reason, minidiscs were marketed as futuristic data storage. They were just smaller CDs and could get lost or damaged easier. I get they looked cool, but nobody uses them.

This was my third attempt to watch Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace; I kept falling asleep because it was so boring. As I finish up this review I couldn’t help but see what could have been. The majority of the movie was pretty bad: between the poorly choreographed final swordfight, bog-standard 90’s sexual tension between the adult leads, poor visual effect compositing (even for 1995), and lack of direction of the child actors in the final act, this movie could have definitely been better. The way Jobe talked about people being reborn “in the womb of Cyberspace” and encouraging the people to let the material world fade away until only Cyberspace remained seemed to be the only bright spot in the whole movie, in terms of performance. Matt Frewer’s line delivery was chilling, especially when compared to the imagery of the material world falling apart…because of his actions. If they had kept that same energy and applied it to the greater whole of the film — perhaps if Jobe had to contend with a copy of his digital consciousness floating around Cyberspace after the first film — that would have been a sequel to rival any of the best franchise films. As it stands, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace is barely watchable and barely anyone knows it exists. A lot of acting careers suffered and died because of this movie; if you can stomach the poor quality, please watch it on a registered platform so those actors can get a residual check for their work on this troublesome film.

BORING ADULTS: The dreadlocked Benjamin Trace and Cori Platt, both multi-disciplinary scientists and former employees of VLI. They’re integral to the plot of the story, but they’re so BORING they put me to sleep.

CHOICE CUTS:

• The music is weirdly inappropriate for a cyberpunk adventure. Swelling brass, string and percussion? You need synths for cyberpunk movies, my brother.
• PRICELESS QUOTES: “Don your eye-phones” meant something completely different in this movie; the name of the tech sounds like iPhone and took me for a loop when I heard it.
• VLI guard uniforms look really fascist, and are one step removed from 1995’s Demolition Man.
• The datacycles our heroic hackers use are a callback to 1982’s Tron, but not nearly as cool as the ones from Flynn’s program.
• Was the backdoor Jobe escaped through in the original Lawnmower Man film just a path back to his old body? If so, then how could he have returned to it if the headset was not on his head? He lost his psychic abilities when he went into Cyberspace, but it’s the only way I can figure out how his physical form is still alive.
• The Benji-style shaggy dog from the 80s is back, and he can hack the web with the best of them!
• PRICELESS QUOTES: Broadcasting planetwide on every monitor, TV, and screen, Jobe said “Come to me all ye who have burdens. I will set you free, and you will no longer be the bastard children of a lost generation! IT’S TIME TO TAKE CONTROL OF THE SYSTEM! There shall be no more authority to oppress you…we can all be the authority. Jack into the New World Order and follow Jobe. Escape the violence and greed that threaten to consume you! Come be one with your fellow man. This…is true spirituality.” Mind you, he says this as he plans to become the new system that only he controls with authority.
• I don’t care how cool or homeless you are, please wash your face.
• Peter’s down with the swirl; good for him!
• CAMEO: Blink and you’ll miss SNL alum Molly Shannon playing a homeless woman!
• The visuals aesthetics are so 90’s — earth tones, oversized fits and formless accessories for the have-nots; sharp geometric shapes for clothes, silver/pewter accessories, and solid cool colors for the corporate styles.
• Camille Cooper (Shocker [1989], Like Father Like Son [1986]) as personal assistant Jennifer embodies the 90’s corporate aesthetic with that severe haircut.
• Benjamin Trace as a hippie hermit made me laugh out loud: he apparently had a spiritual awakening and goes about the desert like a self-styled earth shaman, complete with feathered walking stick and cowrie-shell dreadlocks.
• Peter’s mom died in-between the original film and its sequel, and there’s no sign of Dr. Angelo from the first film.
• Alternate subtitles for this movie include “Jobe’s War” and “Mindfire”.
• They took Jobe and put him in the gyroscope to access VR, wheelchair and all. It must have been really rough on the actor to sit on his shins in wide shots to simulate a double amputee.
• The tagline is weird: “God made him simple. Science made him a god. Now he’s out for revenge.” AGAINST WHOM OR WHAT~