Movie Info
Movie Name: Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace
Studio: New Line Cinema
Genre(s): Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date(s): January 12, 1996
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Jobe 2.0 is much lamer than Jobe 1.0…
Six years after Jobe’s “death”, Peter Parkette (Austin O’Brien) and his friends are continuing to explore cyberspace…even if it means illegal surfing. When Peter encounters his old friend Jobe (Matt Frewer), he learns Jobe has been reborn and reconstructed. Jobe warns Peter that he is dying and sets peter to find Dr. Benjamin Trace (Patrick Bergin) who has constructed a superchip called the Chiron Chip. Unfortunately, Jobe is using Peter and when Trace realizes Jobe’s true plans for world domination, he, Peter, and one of the women attending to Jobe named Dr. Cori Platt (Ely Pouget), they must stop him before Jobe is too powerful.
Directed by Farhad Mann, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace was retitled Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe’s War when it was released on video. The follow-up to The Lawnmower Man of 1992 was panned by critics and is frequently listed as one of the worst films ever made. It has been released on DVD as part of a double pack with the first film.
Least exciting swordfight…ever
The Lawnmower Man was one of those fringe titles. It was mildly interesting and a good-bad film. The Lawnmower Man 2 however is…uh…pretty awful would sum it up.
As weak and misguided the story for The Lawnmower Man was, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace tops it. The first movie at least had the interesting virtual reality storyline. Here you just have Jobe sitting in a chair randomly attacking people to get a microchip…Jobe was a lot cooler in the first film (ok, at least fun-goofy), but he was a killer. Jobe doesn’t seem as threatening or as dangerous…despite being “at war”.
Only one cast member returned for the sequel. Austin O’Brien came back as the hacker kid who Jobe befriended in the first film (and apparently he forgot that Jobe was a murdering killer in the process…hey, he didn’t blow him up so he’s a good guy). Matt Frewer just returns to his Max Headroom days as Jobe but is much less cyberspaced than Jeff Fahey…he is very miscast in that the film tries to turn Jobe into an action star. Patrick Bergin and Ely Pouget form one of the most boring couples and couldn’t save the film.
Countdown to the movie being over!!!
The visuals of the movie are almost non-existent. The half-way interesting virtual reality is replaced with a set and a very blasé sword fight between Bergin and Frewer that looks like it was shot in slow motion and never sped up. Movies on the SyFy channel look better than this film.
Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace is quite awful. The movie loses what at least made the first film watchable…it loses the virtual reality aspect of the story. Instead, you still get the overacting, the bad sci-fi, and none of the redeeming qualities. Fortunately, this film’s failure ended the franchise…hopefully Jobe will stay out of cyberspace.
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