Friday, August 22, 2025

Podcast: Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)

A man in a wheelchair going into a cyberspace wormhole or something.

Your Stupid Minds returns to computer with a sequel to 1992's cyber thriller The Lawnmower Man. Except 1996's Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (or is it Jobe's War?) is bigger, dumber, and significantly less financially successful, somehow opening at #19 in the box office on 1,600 screens. Starring no one from the original movie except Austin O'Brien.

Peter (O'Brien) is an orphaned street urchin on the mean streets of cyberpunk L.A. And when it's cyberpunk L.A. you know what that means! It's perpetually night, it's torrentially raining, and people are warming their hands on fire barrels to counteract Southern California's famously cold climate. We can assume some kind of nuclear winter has set in, but it's never mentioned.

Peter and his cadre of Burger King Kids Club members (including a dog) live in an abandoned subway tunnel and hack into cyberspace using stolen phone cards. That's where he recognizes Jobe (Matt Frewer) despite his dying in the last movie and being recast in this one as a completely different type of guy. Jobe wants him to get in contact with Dr. Benjamin Trace (Patrick Bergin) a replacement for Pierce Brosnan's Dr. Lawrence Angelo from the last movie.

Once they get in contact, Jobe is trying to crack open the Chiron Chip so he can do evil cyberspace stuff. His friendly facade quickly crumbles and he starts doing his Jim Carrey Riddler imitation that Frewer eventually perfects in Generation X.

What follows up until the last ten minutes isn't particularly important. Trace must do a CGI sword fight with Jobe to restore order or something. Also the dog can insert mini CD-ROMs with his paw.

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