Electric Dreams Movie Review

Despite its terminal-ly cute ending, this “fairy tale for computers” manages to generate a mild paranoid buzz for anyone who has ever been on the down side of a mainframe. Lenny Von Dohlen stars as Miles, an architect whose life is gradually taken over by Edgar, his home computer which (don't ask) develops feelings of its own and tries to sabotage Miles’ budding romance with Madeline, his cello-playing upstairs neighbor (Virginia Madsen). Edgar is no HAL (from 2001) or even Joshua (War Games), but he/it is still more interesting than his bland B-movie co-stars, thanks to the voice of Bud Cort, who manages to make this newly plugged-in being both menacing (he cancels Miles’ credit cards and rigs his apartment's security system) and sympathetic (he woos Madeline with a poem composed of words gleaned from TV commercials). Steve Barron was among the first generation of music video directors (Michael Jackson's “Bil-lie Jean") who brought the MTV aesthetic to the big screen. He has since made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie and The Coneheads.

1984 (PG) 95m/C Lenny Von Dohlen, Virginia Madsen, Maxwell Caulfield, Bud Cort, Koo Stark; D: Steven Barron. VHS, Beta, LV MGM