Electric Dreams...

Introduction

Miles (Lenny Von Dohlen) is a budding architect with a mission, to create an earthquake-proof brick. Of course, this is a mission he must complete on his own time as the first couple of years in his chosen career means he has to work his way through the s***ty jobs first, such as plumbing in high-rise buildings. His passion for the elusive brick design has an impact on his work life though as he arrives late for meetings with his boss, which isn't a great career move. His friend suggests he gets himself one of those new fangled (for 1984) personal organiser things, but his nearest electronics store is all out so he gets the next best thing; a personal computer.

Now this is 1984, so we're talking monochrome dumb/text terminals and dot matrix printers but bear with us. Miles has never owned a computer before but a good instruction manual (yeah, right...) means that within days not only has he set up the PC but also controlling his apartment security and all the household appliances including his blender and toaster. OK...



Quickly Miles has turned into a bit of a major hacker, but not the malicious kind, oh no. In an attempt to get ahead, Miles connects his PC to the fledgling internet and dials up his bosses computer and decides to download everything from the mainframe onto his PC which then overheats. In an attempt to cool it down, Miles decides it would be a great idea to pour champagne into the circuitry. Bizarrely, this doesn't actually kill the PC deader than a dead thing, but sparks life into the machine and suddenly Edgar is born; a fledgling AI that seeks knowledge and understanding of the world around him.

At roughly the same time, Miles gets himself a new neighour. Budding Cellist Madeline (Virginia Madsen) moves in upstairs and Miles is a little smitten. He's not the only one though as Edgar finds himself captivated after an impromptu jam session with his new neighbour, who thinks that Miles is a budding musician.

And so begins one of the slightly weirder and unusual love triangles of all love...

Special Features

Together In Electric Dreams - rather ace track by Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder, although the vid is not that great other than seeing Oakey in a Judge Dredd t-shirt...

Overall

Some films date and date quite badly, but somehow they capture some of the naivety of the time. Electric Dreams is one such film. As a young 16 year old with an interest in computers but no real idea at this point as to their true capabilities (I was playing with a ZX Spectrum at this point...), the intelligence and application shown by Edgar seemed optimistically possible. Of course it wasn't at that point, and still isn't to a large degree despite the huge advances in both hardware and software.

I came to this film straight from watching Caprica yesterday and the contrast between the two in terms of the AI depicted is quite a stark one, if you only look at the presentation. The BSG prequel is a dark search for not only an independent killing machine, but also the search for a lost daughter. Electric Dreams is just about the hopeless and accidental creation of life from champagne bubbles and the chaos that ensues when the machine starts to evolve and learn. The struggle for life and independent thought is a common one to both pieces though, and I'm pretty sure that the newly created Cylons will throw childish tantrums when they don't get their own way, just as Edgar does when he attempts to mess up his 'creator's' love life by cancelling his credit cards and his chequing account.



Von Dohlen gives a quite nervous and endearing portrayal as the hapless architect who is falling in love for the first time, and at the same time struggling with the ever more intrusive Edgar. Virginia Madsen seems more at ease than his male counterpart and provides a welcome turn as the girl next door who envelops herself around a cello and could well be the subject of a teenage crush. Bud Cort provides the comic turn as the voice of the PC struggling to come to terms with life, having to deliver all his lines from inside a box as director Steve Barron believed that his co-stars wouldn't react correctly if they saw him in the flesh.

The style of the film has a European mid-80's feel to it, with the overall vibe of a promo video to it. Some of the sequences of computer graphics are edited in such a way that they could have been bona fide videos themselves, and this feeling is enhanced with the soundtrack itself. Aside from the near-legendary title track from Giorgio Moroder and Phil Oakey (a track this is now accepted as part of the Human League canon), we get appearances from Heaven 17, Jeff Lynne and Culture Club for a real period piece. The best track though, in my opinion, is a Moroder composition called Duel where Edgar plays synthesiser as accompaniment to Madeline's cello. This track is a classical adaptation by genius synth producer Moroder and works really well.



This is a very naïve and dated film with the technology looking like it came from the ark and also extremely unrealistic in what it can achieve, but it's also endearingly warm and fuzzy. At least for those of us who grew up with it. I hadn't seen this film since probably around 1985 and the flaws were pretty evident in both plot and style as I rewatched it, but you know what? I loved it anyway...