Watched: 07/12/2024
Format: Amazon
Viewing: Second
Director: Steve Barron
I have a memory of watching this movie during a family road trip. I watched it in a shitty motel room with my dad after my mom and brother fell asleep. Primarily, my memory was "it wasn't very good, and it didn't feel like a comedy, and it seemed like it was supposed to be a comedy but also wanted to be taken seriously, but was dumb."*
That was probably 1986 or so, and here in 2024, my thought is: it wasn't very good, and it seemed like it was supposed to be a comedy but also wanted to be taken seriously, but was dumb. But, in 2024, I also think the movie is oddly prescient - predicting some things that would have seemed ridiculous just 3-4 years ago, but now seem like they've entered the conversation.
Electric Dreams (1984) is a Futureshock movie, taking place what, I'd guess, is supposed to be a few years after its release, 1984. That's just about the time computers started making their way into suburban homes. The parents buying these infernal machines were hoping their nascent Gen-X'ers would be able to understand computers, but didn't know what the hell they were spending their beer money on. In this era, computers were full of mystery and magic as far as the news and movies were concerned. We're coming off WarGames - that posited a teen almost destroying the world by hacking into the US missile systems. Tron was a neat analog of computer stuff, but people thought it meant computers were full of elves. Superman III, thought computers would control the weather.
The basic set-up is that a young architect working for what I think is a law firm (I don't understand) is trying to develop an earthquake-proof-brick (which - stop there, because bricks are not the problem, and the money people should have thrown the brakes on reading this part of the script). He purchases a computer to help him keep on schedule and work on developing the right pattern for his bricks.
Predicting the "internet of things" (are we still saying that? Surely not.) Miles hooks *everything* in his apartment up to his computer, and installs a security system.
Two things happen more or less within the next 24 hours: Virginia Madsen moves in upstairs, and Miles (our hero, played by Lenny Von Dohlen) spills champagne inside his computer which - because 1980's - does not fry the motherboard, but gives the computer a sort of sentience, turning it into an AI.
While Miles is at work, his newly self-aware computer hears Virginia Madsen playing the cello upstairs and creates music to play along with her. Madsen is wildly impressed, and asks Miles about the music, which he states he did not play, and she just chooses to not believe him. And this is why this movie isn't funny and doesn't work. Everything that's a joke in this movie is roughly this: something obvious and incorrect happens and rather than fixing the problem, the problem gets worse.
Example: Virginia Madsen just barges into Miles' apartment. It is clear he was just in the shower - he is wet and only wearing a towel. For reasons I cannot fathom, he denies he was in the shower. For reasons I cannot begin to piece together, he hides his computer from Madsen with his towel and naked body. This is the "comedy" of the movie. It is just people inexplicably doing shit.
I do not understand why, when it is clear Miles' computer has taken on a mind of its own and a personality, and it making his life worse, he does not (a) unplug the computer or (b) detach all of the devices he placed around the house giving the computer access to his systems. Also, Miles' beeper is somehow hijacked by his computer and rather than turn it off or remove the battery, Miles flees the theater. The entire premise of helplessness in the face of an inanimate object is a curious choice.
Meanwhile, I can somewhat forgive a computer movie released in 1984 for the technical gaffes, such as - not understanding a computer has to be connected to the internet to connect to other systems. WiFi would not be a thing for about another 13 years, but Miles' home system has it. Also, somehow the computer is able to see and hear, which... okay. (The dream in 1984 is that a computer will make your coffee?) But it also has access to TV?
In a bit of foresight, the film conflates TV and computers, and in 1984, this was because "both have a screen". But this is the near future, where kids all have pocket computers and people have a Palm personal organizer. So, credit where it's due. Some of this wound up being true.
I'll take for granted that the computer think it's in love with Virginia Madsen though no real reason is given, and I'm unclear if that's what's happening or it's in love with Miles.
On a sad sidenote, one of the voices you hear the computer listening to is Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who passed this weekend, even as we watched the movie. So she was freshly on my mind when we got the news that she was no longer with us.
Btw, there's this storyline occurring just out of frame where Virginia Madsen is already boffing Maxwell Caulfield, but it seems like it was mostly dropped or edited out or just not fully written out. I do not understand leaving any of it in as Miles never reacts to it, really, and it has no impact on anything that happens - we just see Madsen casually with Caulfield, with whom she seems a much better fit at every moment of the movie. He's a fellow musician, which is clearly her kink. He's a big bohunk handsome dude with a cool car. He doesn't lie about what he's doing. I am so confused about what happened there.
What's most off is the vibe of the film - which is almost mournful. Like, the movie is already weirdly slow and mostly takes place a single apartment. Star Lenny Van Dohlen is so flat in his delivery that he seems like a pyschopath, and he seems *fine* as the movie starts, he just needs a calendar or a Casio watch to alarm at him that he needs to get to work. One gets the feeling he is not lonely. He is not filled with wonder that his PC came alive, he is aggravated at the inconvenience. Madsen, who is normally pretty good, matches Van Dohlen's energy, and so our two stars just kind of speak in monotone to each other.
There's a look to the film that, when you know the director previously made 100 music videos, absolutely makes sense. It's got a sort of arty, well-lit, moving camera thing going on that 1980's comedies mostly eschewed. The problem is that it's doing it all in one space, and the lighting suggests subdued feelings more akin to a drama - which this movie sometimes wants to be.
This may be because Electric Dreams has pretentions of telling us something about technology and its place in our lives. This is the thing it thinks it's doing, to the sounds of musicians like Jeff Lynn and Georgio Moroder. Like many dealing with computer technology in this era, it suggests we need to throw our toasters into the sea. It is a weird argument, and is akin to "we need to criminalize marijuana because crack exists. Also, hand me that whiskey.". It wants us to feel a sense of loss for a computer that has decided on suicide by phone call (man, I don't know) that is simply unearned. Because the computer - when given life and a voice (by Bud Cort) still feels like a 1980's sitcom rolling out someone in a cardboard outfit painted silver for that one "Fonzie built a robot" episode.
By the way, the first time we learn the name of the computer is literally moments before it kills itself. There's no meaning to the name, as far as I could determine. It feels like a total after-thought so that on the way home, you don't ask your date "did the computer have a name?" and they'd have to say "no, I don't remember one." But, christ, we all know from having Alexa around, naming your household AI is kind of a necessity.
Most fascinating is that the movie is partially about an AI generating "art" on Miles' behalf - in this case, the computer makes two original songs and plays along with Madsen. The movie even anticipates the computer pulling from a variety of sources, sorting through them and making something that, by the letter of the law, matches the requirements, but sucks. There are whole sequences that sound like the current TechBros (Miles) insisting that AI and its users are just using a tool to achieve something and that is the same as had they made the art themselves versus the originator of the art (our computer) saying "what? No. I made that. You have to give me credit."
It's pretty wild.
I'm not sure if it's clear, but I hated this movie. It's the unfunny kid in class trying to ape the funny kid's schtick and embarrassing themself. When it tries to be serious and make points about technology, it trips all over itself. The lead is flat and unsympathetic while also having no discernible motivations.
I'm shocked to find the movie received okay notices from folks like Roger Ebert, and I suspect that our differences of opinion stem largely from the questions about the role of technology in our lives being resolved in the ensuing 40 years, and what Ebert sees as basically Cyrano, I see as "just turn it off and turn it on again." And I am less charmed by a bumbling dude lying as the premise of a romance as that now comes with very different cultural baggage.
*Dug watched the movie with us, and asked what I remembered from seeing it the first time, and this is more or less it. I remembered the girl seemed classier than a romantic comedy actress as I thought of them. And the movie featured the "hero" yelling at his computer. Which is maybe all pretty accurate. But that's about it. Mostly I remembered thinking "that was kind of stupid", and I was 12 or so.
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