Before I even get to the film, when did the subtitle become Jobe’s War? I always remember it being Beyond Cyberspace, but maybe I’m in one of those Mandela holes so prevalent these days.
Regardless, in this sequel to The Lawnmower Man — a Stephen King adaptation I never saw and probably never will— Jobe (Matt Frewer), a mentally handicapped and perpetually legless landscaper who loves comics and cake, is put to work by a heartless corporation to design a cyberworld inside of some sort of a super chip.
Outside, as the world is mired in a low-rent end-of-civilization-style collapse, a group of subterranean youths and their wacky dog are contacted by Jobe to find the comically apocalyptic Dr. Trace (a moustache-less Patrick Bergin) and help him decipher part of the super chip. Too bad it’s a trick and, drunk on power, Jobe has ATMs spit out money and fire hydrants shoot fire.
It’s all part of his plan to rule cyberspace as a god; personally, I don’t see a problem, but Trace and the kids do, jumping into the information superhighway, hopping on their “cyber-bikes” and taking on Jobe with a rather run-of-the-mill swordfight before the extremely rushed ending.
Still, would I be wrong in saying I kind of liked it?
Fitting in on the virtually imagined circuit board of pre-internet features like Virtuosity and Brainscan, Lawnmower Man 2 makes little to no sense, but in a way, that’s probably its strongest feature; it’s a disjointed film with characters that weirdly respond to one another, much of the time feeling like we’re in the dreams of another Frewer character, Max Headroom.
As long as we’re changing film titles, how about Matt Frewer Presents Tales from the Chip: Jobe’s War? Just a thought … —Louis Fowler