Lawnmower Man movie reviews

The Lawnmower Man

This is one of the more infamous King adaptations, mostly because it isn't one, not really.  The characters and story are completely different.  It's sort of like the recently announced Haven series in that the connection is in name only.

I read, on a site that some hold in ill regard, that the script writers had a completely different plan in mind.  The studios had the rights to the story, however, and decided why not mash the two together?

In their defense, the story would've been nigh impossible to adapt to the big screen.  For one thing, it's quite short, leaving little material to work with.  Also, the premise of the story involves Pan starting a lawn mowing business.

The movie involves a scientist who enlists a mentally challenged man in his experiment to expand the human consciousness using virtual reality.  It works a little too well and the man, Jobe, uses said virtual reality to try and become a god.

As you can see, the two have next to nothing in common.  I just wonder why they bothered trying to tie it to King.  Yeah, they had the rights, but they seemed to shoot themselves in the foot by claiming it was an adaptation.  Titles are funny in that you have quite a bit more leeway as far as usage goes.  If you put out a movie or book with the same title as another, as long as it's justified, people will usually look the other way.  They could've just as easily called it Lawnmower Man and made no mention of Stephen King.  It wouldn't have cost them the money they ended up paying in legal settlements and fees and viewers wouldn't have gone in with any expectation of an adaptation of a pre-existing work.

There are a few nods peppered throughout the movie though.  One of the supporting characters is named Harold Parkette, Jobe pushes a lawnmower telekinetically and even kills a guy with it, the Shop plays a prominent role (not a nod to the story, but to King's work in general), and a few of King's recurring story tropes pop up now and again.  Aside from that, this is really a movie in and of itself with no real connection to the source material.

OK, so it's a poor adaptation, but how's the movie on it's own?  Still pretty bad.  The acting is terrible and while the concept is interesting, the execution is just poor.  Even Pierce Brosnan turns in a subpar performance this time around.  

Of course, his performance is Oscar worthy compared to Jeff Fahey, the man who plays Jobe.  Maybe it was just me, but I found his early scenes really hard to watch.  It skimmed the line of being offensive.  I'm not sure whether it crossed the line or not, but I was really uncomfortable watching the first third of the movie, Tom Cullen he ain't.  While he becomes less painful to watch later on, his acting is still pretty terrible.

You know what else is terrible? His haircut, yeesh.  Speaking of which, the attractive neighbor lady suddenly becomes infatuated with him.  My suspension of disbelief only goes so far, no one would find that haircut attractive, seriously.

The movie also makes the mistake of peaking early on.  The opening scene has one of the test monkeys that is wearing a VR helmet, break free, steal a gun and start killing people.  That's awesome.  If you had made the whole film about the security detail trying to stop the terminator monkey, that would've been an awesome, at the very least entertaining flick.  Sadly, that plot element is pretty much wrapped up by the time the credits stop rolling.

The special effects didn't blow me away either. Even though it was made ten years earlier, Tron was much superior in that regard.  Actually it was superior in pretty much every regard.

I really can't recommend watching this movie. It is really bad.  Just go ahead and watch Tron, you're better off.  Tron's awesome, this movie sucks.






The Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War