4 Star

Modem Love Triangle.

From the man that brought us the iconic videos of the likes of Michael Jackson: Billie Jean, Bryan Adams: Summer of ’69 and A-Ha: Take on Me, Steve Baron (Coneheads) directs Virgin Films production company’s first film in this take on the computer coming into the home.

What could possibly go wrong?

Miles Harding (Lenny von Dohlen, World’s End) is a hard working architect who is trying to develop a new building block based on a jigsaw piece that can withstand earthquakes, but this dedication makes him at odds with his bosses as he keeps turning up late for work.

It is 1984 and solid state technology is in the shops and hitting the streets and homes of the common man and woman. A work colleague tells him he should get an organiser to sort out his time keeping. Miles heads for the local computer shop where the shop assistant bamboozles him with jargon and he ends up buying way more than he needs. He jumps head first into this technology setting up his house to be run by the computer, linking it to everything in the house.

Meanwhile back at his apartment set on the hills of San Francisco California, Madeline (Virginia Madsen, Dune) is moving into the apartment above Miles. The removal men are not the brightest bunch and she makes sure that none of them damage her beloved cello, which she plays professionally.

Miles sets up his computer with his name spelled wrong, so it addresses him as ‘Moles’ whenever it communicates with him. Whilst working on his building block he remembers the massive computer down in the basement of his office block. He connects the computer to the phone line and dials up the mainframe and tells it to download everything to his home computer. There is too much information and his computer starts to really overheat and when a bottle of champagne pops its cork he uses that to cool it down.

Amazingly this doesn’t completely fry the computer even with Miles’ lame attempt to dry out the computer with a hair dryer before he has to rush off to work again. Upstairs Madeline is practising on her cello and the sound travels down the ventilation shaft and wafts into Miles apartment where the computer picks up the sounds through its external microphone. The computer notices the sounds and tries to replicate them and it soon learns and plays an accompaniment to her music (Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach). She thinks that it is Miles playing along and has new admiration for her neighbour.

As Madeline and Miles’ relationship grows, so does the computers intelligence and its ability to communicate with Miles and he has to teach it about the meaning of words such as kiss and love. Love never runs smooth when a computer is involved.

Writer Rusty Lemorande must have had a time machine when he came up with a tale of future technology, computers running your house, who would have thought it?

This film is also a platform for some of the best musicians at the time such as Culture Club, Giorgio Moroder, Phil Oakey, Heaven 17 and Jeff Lynne making this 95 minutes of pure fun. A must for technophiles.

SPECIAL FEATURES
•New restoration presented in High Definition 1080p
•‘Is This A Story?’-New Interview with Director Steve Barron
•‘Electric Dreaming’-New Interview with Writer/Co-Producer Rusty Lemorande
•‘Miles and Madeline’-New Interviews with stars Lenny von Dohlen and Virginia Madsen
•Limited Edition slipcase with premium spot gloss varnish (initial 2000 units)
•New SDH subtitles for the hearing impaired

Electric Dreams is available on Blu-ray.