Virtual Reality Gets Lost in Cyberspace in ‘Man 2’

Feature films based on virtual reality have a basic problem: Instead of presenting worlds intended to entertain people sitting in chairs, what you get are movies about people sitting in chairs that are supposed to entertain people sitting in chairs.

Sure, the special-effects guys must love this stuff, but there’s a certain distancing that goes on--especially in a film like “Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace,” in which it’s very difficult to determine who or what or when virtual reality--and not the cinema’s usual nonreality--is underway.

If any of this sounds confusing, try making sense of the movie itself (which went unscreened for critics last week). Jobe (Matt Frewer of “Max Headroom,” taking over from Jeff Fahey) is the Lawnmower Man, a simpleton transformed into a genius by means of virtual reality. While undergoing rehabilitation through VR, he is being used by the evil entrepreneur Jonathon Walker (Kevin Conway) to perfect the “Chiron Chip” through which Walker will gain omnipotence over the world’s computer networks.

Jobe, however, has his own plans, although they’re being disrupted by Dr. Benjamin Trace (Patrick Bergin), who invented the Chiron Chip but was cheated out of his patent by Walker, who has assigned the beautiful Dr. Cori Platt (Ely Pouget) to oversee Jobe’s rehabilitation and training, but who was Trace’s former lover, and is herself being distracted by both him and a quartet of street urchins led by underage Internet traveler Peter (Austin O’Brien).

You with me so far? You deserve a lot of credit.

“Lawnmower Man 2” is set in “Los Angeles, the future,” which is rapidly becoming a cliche. What we get here is cut-rate “Blade Runner” locales and streets filled with fire, mayhem, video-phones and unprotected store windows. Add a generation of children living in a Charles Dickens-meets-Bill Gates world and you have a rather illogical landscape--one that may have been, and was, created on computer.

And if a movie is supposed to be about what computers can create within the realm of virtual reality, but relies on the same technology for much of its own substance, what you have is a creature eating its tail. Thank goodness that “Lawnmower Man 2,” like most of its action-adventure progenitors, resorts in the end to the same basic devices: hand-to-hand combat and moral simplicity. Some things, despite microchips, never change.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for sci-fi action-violence and brief language. Times guidelines: Sporadic vulgarity and violence, but tame enough for all but the youngest audiences.

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‘Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace’

Matt Frewer: Jobe

Patrick Bergin: Dr. Ben

Ely Pouget: Dr. Cori Platt

Austin O’Brien: Peter

Kevin Conway: Jonathon Walker

A Farhad Mann film, released by New Line Cinema. Director Farhad Mann. Producers Keith Fox and Edward Simons. Screenplay Farhad Mann. Cinematographer Ward Russell. Editor Joel Goodman. Costumes Deborah Everton. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.