The Lawnmower Man

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Once again we try to "go into the internet" by revisiting a film from the early 90's where people didn't understand how computers worked. This one delivered to us by stinker-staples Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan in this NOT Stephen King adaptation.

The Lawnmower Man when it came out was beloved and believed to be a great film by 12-year-olds. It no longer holds that majesty. This movie stinks. From all angles, most notably the special-effects and its dubious knowledge of how servers work. But notably as well is the acting from Jeff, Pierce and Dean Norris (of Breaking Bad fame and one hell of a Twitter follow).

The plot (as usual with Stephen King related business) is pretty all over the place and doesn't make any sense. Toss in that it's not based on Stephen King's work at all and you've got people just trying to say a thousand different things and trying to achieve a thousand different film motifs. You've got cybernetic super-chimp Universal Soldiers, playing God with science, bullies, omnipotence, super-powers, magic just being a form of science, corporate greed, and war for profit. All those items get bungled together with the completely dumb story-telling. So nice try guys.

While we cannot in good conscience recommend the "Director's Cut" version that we watched, we definitely recommend a riff-session with the original cut of The Lawnmower man. It's got too much banana-business and incredibly dumb points that it's a great revisit....when it's 108 minutes.

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Streaming Do's and Don'ts

• No Retreat, No Surrender w/ Rifftrax - Amazon Prime
• Krampus - HBO Now
• Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II w/ MST3K - Netflix

About The Lawnmower Man - Movie Information

Sam's Boring Bullshit

Originally billed as “Stephen King’s: The Lawnmower Man”, the prefix was successfully removed by Stephen King himself via a successful lawsuit. Apparently the court deemed there was no meaningful resemblance to the movie and the short story by King. New Line Cinema, knowing how hot a commodity King was in 1992, had taken an original script called Cyber God, which they liked, and had the writers change minor elements so that the Lawnmower Man would at least be a fitting title.

The plot of the film has more in common with Daniel Keyes’ novel Flowers of Algernon, though it doesn’t credit these “similarities” at any point. King would eventually have to sue them again as New Line Would show no compliance with the original ruling. After winning the second lawsuit King was probably feeling more comfortable. New Line could give two shits though. The home video versions still bore King’s name. If anyone is wondering how different the short story was, a brief synopsis:  A magic lawnmower mows the lawn by itself and a naked goat man follows the lawnmower around eating the clippings, when the patron of this service finds it undesirable the goat man and magic lawnmower kill him. Not really the same thing as Jeff Fahey taking over the internet by flying around inside of it. In the end New Line may have been right as the film grossed $32 million against a $10 million dollar budget. To this day all mention of this film has King’s name slapped all over it.

They may not be a super team, Director Brett Leonard and Writer/Producer Gimel Everett may have been Super Friends. Everett never worked without Leonard Rarely worked without Everett. Beyond this film they would bring us; The Dead Pit, Hideaway with Jeff Goldblum, future episode Virtuosity and the travesty that is the film adaptation of Man Thing.

Though other actors are the envy of the trade Jeff Fahey is the envy of the common man. We all want to be Jeff Fahey. With 154 acting credits and counting, this guy has done it all – and all the ladies. Fahey is the real man the Dos Equis commercials are portraying. If you don’t believe me look at his Wikipedia picture, it is dripping sex. Not sissy Tom Cruise or George Clooney sex, dirty construction worker sex. Fahey is a genitalia lumberjack. He participates in many humanitarian and charity efforts, so we forgive him for all the hearts and vaginas that he has broken.

KAEOF: Is this internet worse than Johnny Mnemonic’s.