The Lawnmower Man

Mostly plays like an artificial stupidity experiment. Zappy visuals aside, it's essentially a reactionary take on science, stemming from the movies' traditional belief that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a lot of knowledge is worse. Think of it as Faust Goes to the Lab, with an ambitious doc serving as Mephistopheles. [6 Mar 1992, p.30]

Besides the inevitable devious government types, there are anemic subplots about a fanatical priest and an abused mother and child. Let's see. This is your brain: MMMMMMMMM. This is your brain watching The Lawnmower Man: ZZZZZZZZZ. [6 Mar 1992, p.4D]

Virtual reality aside, THE LAWNMOWER MAN suffers all the usual problems: the cliched story is further undermined by wooden performances (Fahey, his naturally dark hair stripped to the consistency of a Harpo Marx fright wig, is particularly excruciating) and the inevitable [spoiler omitted] ending. Read full review

Does King's tale play a part in the film at all? Kind of; half of it is there, but they've left out the really scary images from the story. The only thing The Lawnmower Man accomplishes is to remind you how boring it is to watch someone else play a video game. If they ever start marketing this virtual reality stuff, however, someone's going to get very rich. [9 Mar 1992, p.C4]

Unfortunately, the VR special effects are few and far between in a film short on plot and long on derivation. Read full review