1980s were the age when feature films began to resemble music videos. That was mainly due to whole new generation of directors who had learned their craft in their particular form. Longer form of feature film, however, had its set of challenges many of those new directors couldn’t meet. One such example is Electric Dreams, 1984 science fiction romantic comedy directed by Steve Barron, director known for some of the most iconic music videos of the age.
The plot is set in San Francisco and the protagonist, played by Lenny Von Dohlen, is Miles Harding, young architect who dreams of designing new brick that would allow buildings to withstand the strongest earthquakes. In order to develop this idea and better organise his life, he buys personal computer and connects it with various gadgets in his home. Due to his clumsiness Miles causes the incident which would result in his computer developing sentience. In the meantime, Miles has noticed his neighbour, beautiful cellist Madeline Robistat (played by Virginia Madsen) and fell in love with her. She hears someone playing music in the next apartment and becomes convinced that that was Miles. She falls in love with him, while Miles asks his computer named “Edgar” (voiced by Bud Cort) to compose love song for her. “Edgar” does so, but as the relationship between Miles and Madeline grows, he becomes jealous and begins sabotaging Miles’ life.
Script by Rusty Lemorande was based on the ingenious idea of combining the romantic plot of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac with the brave new world of information technology and having computer as part of love triangle. It also tried to exploit novelty of home computers and show the world in which ordinary people have to rely on various high tech gadgets for most banal aspects of their everyday lives. Most of the scriptwriters would have used such premise as basis for horror or thriller (like Demon Seed), but Lemorande instead opts for the comedy. Great idea, however, was wasted in this film because Electric Dreams got produced by Virgin Films, short-lived British studio which treated its feature films as a cheap vehicle to promote Virgin Group’s record labels. Electric Dreams had soundtrack provided by many popular British pop musicians, including some, like Philip Oakey of Human League fame, that had worked with Steve Barron before. The film was, consequently, made like a music video, with “cool” images and sounds taking precedence over everything else, including sensible plot or characterisation. Good example is character of “Edgar” who appears and develops too late in the film to properly serve as part of love triangle. The casting seems good, with nerdish Van Dohlen and stunningly beautiful Madsen looking perfect for their roles, but their work is ruined by poor dialogue and directorial style which often makes ordinary scenes incomprehensible or overly pretentious. Film looks like utter disappointment despite its mercifully short running time.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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I've neverer seen this but i have the soundtrack record
This is a romantic film, maybe a story made in a very beautiful way in a couple
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