Ostensibly based on a Stephen King short story, one can see that it bears little if any resemblance to that source. King doesn't even have his name included in the credits of the movie. On its own, THE LAWNMOWER MAN does have some brilliant computerized effects, especially considering we're only in the early nineties here. The story focuses on maverick scientist Pierce Brosnan, who has developed a virtual reality program that has mind-boggling possibilities. Of course, the scientist is being monitored by the sinister "Shop", a covert governmental group that has more nefarious schemes for Brosnan's discovery. Brosnan loses his monkey when it goes on a violent rampage, so he takes a hiatus and decides to continue the experiment on a human. He chooses Jeff Fahey, an illiterate, mentally challenged lawn mower operator as his guinea pig. Fahey agrees and before long, he has become as brilliant as his mentor, and thanks to some tampering from the Shop, a more malevolent force as well. It all culminates into a virtual showdown at the end, as Fahey decides he can be a god if he goes into the mainframe of the computer and puts himself out into global interface and then he can control the world. The ending is a little nebulous, although all the phones ringing at the same time universally would indicate Fahey managed to gain access before the lab was exploded. This crucial ending is neglected in the sequel, which will be discussed further in a different review.
LAWNMOWER MAN is good scifi entertainment, with marvelous effects, but suffers in the performance of Fahey, who is totally unbelievable as the gentle Jobe, but who does gain some credibility when he becomes malevolent. Brosnan tries hard, but the script has trapped him in too many cliches.

There are a lot of people (especially in the movie industry) who doesn't like Brett Leonard ; and his other movies like "Virtuosity" (with Russell Crowe & Denzel Washington) clearly shows he is revealing an insight beyond Stephen King (his short story has very little to do with Leonards script !) into the so-called evil . Of course Kubricks Clockwork Orange is in remembrance , but Leonard does what Kubrick couldn't do - probably due to Burgess novel and the "impersonal" story-points of C.O. - by letting us into the evil guy and by understanding his secret of the deepest darkest unhappiness known to man : The Luciferian state .

However , TLM is a different movie than "Virtuosity" and battles with "brighter" themes !

TLM is from 1992 ; Windows 3.1 was only just announced (Windows 95 didn't exist yet of course :-) and Windows NT was only on BETA-stage ... The wonder-promise of virtual learning , which now is commonly accepted (people "speedlearn" from the Internet and softwares on computers) , takes further steps into the future to a threshold we eventually will run into (when we have eliminated spam-mongers and cyber-terrorists !) sooner or later .

And here TLM starts it's "evil magic" , not like Fausts choice , but like a two-way-responsibility gone apart between the individual (Fahey) and the society (Brosnan , Slate etc.) resulting in tragedy on both parts . We can learn a lot , but we cannot learn how to unlock our civilized psychological prison as we ARE the prison of our mothers "milk" or symbolically in Jobe's case , the aggression-chemical !

Yet I find there are many other themes (in example : the creator and the creation / the mystery of sex and the mind etc.) , this underrated ahead-of-it's-time-movie treats , that is worth paying attention to ; this is a masterpiece in more than one way . And I find most of the actors great in this movie , of course with Jeff Fahey as the real leading star here and Mr.(X?)Bond/Brosnan to give a slightly unconvincing performance .

I'm looking forward to see his "Hideaway" (with Jeff Goldblum & Alicia Silverstone) based on Koontz novel .

My delight in and fascination with this movie revolves around the elements related to accelerated learning - yap, I have a certain obsession with mind-stuff and learning, development of different abilities, so this movie was right up my alley.

The movie involves a scientists who has passion for mental development. His main tools are nootropics (smart drugs) and virtual reality. His experiments are funded by government which is only interested in creating killers. The original experiment is conducted on a monkey. It goes astray when the monkey breaks lose and kills few people. Though, even this neurologically rewired monkey doesn't kill indiscriminately - he assesses whether the individual he is facing is potentially dangerous or not. For that matter, one could say, this would work even on the instinctive level of an animal. This monkey, on the run, stumbles upon a Lawnmower Man - a good-hearted, simple, young man whose mental development has been arrested somewhere around the age of a 5-year old and who just happens to live next door to the scientist's house.

Lawnmower man and the monkey strike instant friendship, however the government agents track down the monkey and shoot him. Lawnmower is devastated (he has identified the monkey as one of his comic strip characters come to life), and so is the scientist. But then, the brilliant idea occurs to the scientist, to continue his experiments in private on the Lawnmower man.

He begins infusing him with nootropics and stimulating his mind with virtual reality. The first images impressed upon his mind, very much in the way subliminal programming is used are the seals from the Solomonic magick. Different parts of his brain are also neurologically stimulated, following by feeding the man's mind with more information.

This is a sci-fi movie, but the learning process does have some parallels to the methods and techniques used in real life. There are lots of people who are taking nootropics (smart drugs), albeit in oral form; and subliminal and supraliminal programming - if not yet quite the use of virtual reality - are alive and well. Those who are familiar with photoreading and different techniques from Neuro-Linguistic Programming, also know that the mind does tend to absorb information better when it is delivered fast, as well as when all of one's senses are engaged in the process (that's the stimulation that virtual reality here provides).

So, the hero of this movie, Lawnmower man, makes extraordinarily rapid progress - together with amassing huge amount of knowledge in record time, absorbing the information mainly subliminally, he also begins to develop different abilities which are normally considered supernatural. This, as matter of fact, also makes sense, because development of such abilities is based on stimulating and creating new neural connections. The more he learns, the more hungry for learning he becomes. There's also the reality that anyone with passion for learning is well aware of. His ultimate desire is to "be all" - yet another element, that those who are involved in spiritual growth are very much into - the ultimate goal of merging with All There Is. This, being a sci-fi movie, instead of merging with the spirit - our hero merges with the virtual reality - which is a decent metaphor for the spiritual reality / a quantum reality, where everything is made out of mind stuff and through the mind one becomes omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient.

In vast majority of the movies, it is this ending where the movie flops and this ultimate level of omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience either for dramatic purposes or due to lack of understanding of those who play with the idea, ends up in feeding individual's ego (that was even worst in Highlander than in this movie), as the one who has become All just won't have any desire to go and kill others - how could he - he IS present in all (even all others) - but for drama needed to make movies exciting this element that one would be all loving at this point, seems as if it would be boring. In any event, here is where The Lawnmower Man II, flopped - it went into cyber neverland and lost the spirit of the original theme.

This is only one of 4 or 5 movies where I actually walked out in the middle of a screening. I saw it as part of a double feature at a budget theatre and still I felt that I had been ripped off, it was that bad. I respect Jeff Fahey's talents as an actor, but he should be ashamed to have his name attached to this piece of crap, as should Stephen King (although I guess he really had very little to with this movie's production).

The world would be well-served if all prints of this movie could be destroyed. Forget weapons of mass destruction --- find the original negatives for this stinker and eliminate them. We will all be better off.

Certainly not Pierce Brosnan's best work. If you need some background while you do something else, it's okay. Don't be upset that I don't own this SciFi movie. I saw it when it was originally released at the theater. At that time I thought the graphics were great, but it just didn't grab my attention and hold it. I didn't mind going to the lobby for a soda, popcorn, hot dog, nachos, restroom, check out movie posters, make a phone call,... The problem is the story got to wrapped up in the lawnmower mans psyche. That would be okay if it was thought provoking, but it is mostly graphical halucinations and sexual innuendo. Not that illuminating into the characters motivations. One thing stands out in this movie. Some great early CGI. If you feel the need to see one of them catch this one, the second is much worse.