Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War (1996)

"Jack in. Jack off. What's the difference?" - Jobe

aka: Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace
Jobe is back, and still wants to rule the world through virtual reality.
Starring: Matt Frewer, Patrick Bergin, Austin O'Brien,

Link to IMDB

Stephen King was so disgusted with the first Lawnmower Man movie that he fought to have name his name removed from the project... Of course a sequel had to be made!

Miraculously, Jobe survived the explosive ending of the first movie! His body has been mostly paralyzed but his mind still functions well enough, and now he's in the care of Walker, a computer engineer that needs Jobe's intelligence to help build a new type of super computer chip. Jobe is depressed though, and spends most of his time in virtual reality programs where he can still walk and wear a golden bodysuit all day.
Peter, Jobe's young friend from the first movie, is now a teenager living in the sewers with his friends... Wait, what? It seems like only a few years have passed, but now the normal world of the first movie has become a Blade Runner-style industrial future where kids live in the sewers. It makes no sense!
Anyways, Jobe contacts Peter through VR and asks him to find Dr. Trace, the original designer of the super chip, so that he can help Jobe finish building it.


Walker's plan for the chip is revealed, and of course it's not good. He wants to use it to control the minds of the public, under the guise of connecting the whole world to unlimited information in VR... Or something like that. A lot of the "tech-talk" is just complete nonsense. It's suffice to say that Walker's a bad and greedy man.
Peter and his friends track down Dr. Trace who's living out in the desert like a hippy, and he eventually agrees to get involved because he knows the dangerous potential of the chip. Jobe has also come to realize the power at his disposal, and reveals a maniacal plan to make himself immortal in VR and be the god of every computer of the world! Sure, movie... whatever.

Peter etc.

It becomes a three-way race to see who can control the chip first. Walker wants to enslave the world, Jobe wants be a cyber-space god and enslave the world, and Trace just wants to stop them both. The plot moves fast and there's a fair bit of action (in VR and in the real world) but the movie finds a way to make it muddled and very boring. Just imagine people hacking computers and saying "virtual" and "cyber" every ten seconds, and you've basically seen half of the movie already.

Dr. Trace

Walker

This clearly wasn't planned as a Lawnmower sequel, and the title was just slapped on at the last minute. The virtual reality CGI definitely looks better than the first movie, but it's still low-budget garbage that wouldn't impress anyone in 1996. Pretty much the only thing that kept me entertained was laughing at the bad acting and the bizarre cyber-space scenes. Matt Frewer's performance as Jobe is quite peculiar, but it feels too much like Jim Carrey's ridiculous Riddler from Batman Forever. He's super exaggerated and nothing like the earlier Jobe, but it does add some flair to an otherwise dry 90 minutes.

????????

I think that's it for Stephen King related movies this month. I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the ill reputed movies are quite fun. (Who knew The Mangler was going to be awesome!?) I think it's when you get into sequel territory that things get truly bad.

Be sure not to miss:
- The smart dog was pretty cool, too bad he didn't get more to do.
- Frewer has played a VR creation before: Max Headroom! And now that I think about it, this would make more sense as an evil Headroom story than a Lawnmower Man movie.
- Molly Shannon is supposed to be in here somewhere, but I never noticed her.

Internet review:
"If this is anybody's guilty pleasure, I'd recommend therapy immediately." - 93Maniac

Should I watch it?
No, despite some laughs it's just too dull and pointless.

Where can I find it?
Links here.

Lawnmower Man 2 gets...