Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Pretty much a permanent fixture on IMDb's Bottom 100 list, 1996's "Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace" is not only widely considered one of the worst sequels ever made... it's widely considered one of the worst films ever made period. While the second claim might be somewhat debatable in retrospect (oh, it's bad... it's really bad, but maybe not "worst of all time bad"), the former is most certainly a given. The original film is a wildly dated but mostly harmless sci-fi thriller about a mentally-challenged man who is granted superhuman intelligence and abilities through the power of virtual reality, sending him spiraling on a path towards an evil plot for world domination. It's forgettable save for its cheesy early-CG effects and a few decent performances by future star Pierce Brosnan and the titular Lawnmower Man Jobe played by Jeff Fahey. It's a mediocre film, but it hit it fairly big at the box office, so a sequel was pretty much guaranteed.What people couldn't have predicted, however, is just how incredibly insane the follow-up would be. "Lawnmower Man 2" is frankly bizarre, and never anything less than over-the-top from scene to scene. Story goes the studio-suits behind this mess were hoping to spin the series off into a teen-aimed superhero movie franchise set in cyberspace (a far cry from the more deliberate and slow-burn thriller the original was), and this film would be sort-of a stepping stone in that direction. Add to that woeful miscasting of pretty much every lead character, a lot of nonsensical ret-con work that frequently butchers the storyline of the first film and post-production problems including the director being locked out of the editing room... and you pretty much have a recipe for disaster.Six years after the events of the first film in a now post- apocalyptic world right out of "Blade Runner" (I guess?), Jobe (now played by Max Headroom himself, Matt Frewer) has been discovered and brought back from the brink of death by an evil megalomaniacal VR tycoon, who needs him to perfect the film's MacGuffin- the "Chiron Chip"... the most powerful computer chip ever conceived. After re-discovering his old friend Peter Parkette (Austin O'Brien) in virtual reality, Jobe goes on a quest to track down the creator of VR, Dr. Trace (Patrick Bergin), who has key information that will assist in Jobe taking control of the Chiron Chip... or something stupid like that. Blah, blah, blah... Jobe goes power-crazy yet again and tries to take over the world with the Chiron Chip. Chiron Chip, Chiron Chip... Chiron Chip. You'll be sick of that combination of words by the time the film's over. They say it constantly.Basically, the film is a weird mixed-drink from Satan's tavern... one part "Blade Runner", one part "Super Mario Bros. The Movie", one part "Tron", one-half part the original "Lawnmower Man"... topped off with five parts "Highlander 2: The Quickening." Garnish with overacting. Serve over ice from Flint, Michigan.Everything is a fundamental mess. The storyline is nonsensical and completely unclear, with the main focus being on delivering constant techno-babble as often as possible while punctuating every few scenes with an explosion or bizarro murder-sequence as Jobe picks off various targets, though sanitized for a PG-13 rating. As mentioned above, the film's MacGuffin of choice is the "Chiron Chip", though the Chip itself is poorly established and doesn't seem to amount to all that much in the story. There's also some genuinely laughable mis-judgments on the part of the filmmakers to try and gear the film towards children as per studio request... so you get uproarious scenes where the "Information Superhighway" is personified as an actual highway in cyberspace that our heroes get into a car-chase on. I could not stop laughing. Everyone in the cast mugs for the camera in such a way that you cringe so much that you can't help but giggle, with special props going to Frewer, who turns the quiet and sinister Jobe from the first-film into a cackling Jim Carrey wannabe who spouts one- liners at the top of his lungs in every scene. The editing is an absolute mess, with not a single moment given more than an instance of breathing room before it rockets to the next scene... probably because producers oh-so-needed it to appeal to the kids with their "Mtv's and their Nintendo's and whatever kids these days like." And the effects sucked, plain and simple. Not only were they poor in comparison to other films released around the time... they're somehow objectively worse than the effects in the original four years earlier!Yet... I don't totally hate the film, and I even do have a mild recommendation for it. It's awful. Dreadful. But also kinda entertaining. Fans of trashy B-movies and bad cinema will probably get a kick out of it, much as I did. It's worth watching once for those crowds. I know I couldn't stop laughing at it. It's just so baffling and mind-numbing, that even as you feel your braincells depleting... you might get some serious chuckles thanks to it. Also, I can't help but comment... there is an occasional hint at brilliance here and there. You get the feeling that director/co- writer Farhad Mann was really trying his hardest, and there are a few scenes that are competently filmed and directed. I think there's a significantly better film somewhere beneath the surface that you glean the occasional look at here. Not a good film... but a better film. It'd be interesting to see what his original vision was.But really, aside from bad-movie buffs, I cannot in good conscience recommend "Lawnmower Man 2" to anyone. It's terrible. Strange. And wildly confusing. And it is easily and indisputably one of the worst sequels ever made, earning a much-deserved 1 out of 10 for me.

Virtual Reality is a normal thing nowadays especially in the gaming industry. If you watch this flick it's funny to see how they thought back then what VR should be. So far so good but that's the only positive thing I can say.To be honest, it has nothing to do with the original Lawnmower Man (1992). We do have Jobe ( the VR) but this time al acting is done by other actors. Still, it doesn't make sense at all. But for me made in 1996 the effects are really laughable, so cheapie. It do has an atmosphere that reminded me of Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984) only those were better done effect wise and story wise. Completely outdated but only to watch if you want to see what they thought the future would look like with cell phones and VR.Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Oh deal, just when we though Hollywood was recently going down the tube, this movie popped up in the Comcast on-demand option. Nothing beats watching movies free or for a fraction of buying the disc or renting it on netflick.This movie is basically followup to the first Lawn Mower movie. The kid that we see in the first movie is now grown up, a hacker, and a kid whose life went downhill. Where is Pierce Bronson's character? Well guess the first movie sucks, why bother being in it then.As for the Jobe guy, wasn't he all stretched out thin in the first one? Well, anyways, this movie is like the terrible Robocop 3 where our future is bleak, corporate has their own little military and its a dirty homeless city setting of a movie.Be warn, this movie is just a time filler if you're looking to waste time or as someone said earlier, a movie to scare your inlaws out the door. Its on comcast now if those who have an account can watch it.

Yes, it may be one of the worst films ever made, yes its incredibly dated, but it still has the futurama appeal of the 1st movie however, unlike the first this is far less intellectual (not to say V1 was), but since a couple things in this wont come to pass for a couple years now, i reaken the best time to watch this would be somewhere around 2011 on a computer hooked up to a pair of those $1000 glasses with a projector built in while using something like the emotive headset (google it before you cry n00b)instead of a mouse.But then again, since it's more of a cheap CGI/blue screen version of the Die Hard series rather than an intelligent forerunner to the Matrix like the first, i'm inclined to say this is more akin to a 1996 vinegar than to the 1992 port-noir the original was.