Just in case you were wondering, there are no androids or sheep in this movie, for anyone who wants to make a Blade Runner reference.
What this movie doeshave is an extremely young Virginia Madsen (pre-Irulan, even!) and some seriously amusing ideas about how computers work and might then achieve sentience. Apparently, the magic ingredient, as is so often the case, is booze.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Meet Miles: mild mannered architect sporting what might be the largest eyeglasses in the history of spectacles. He is remarkably cute, despite this, but is sort of a tard-o all things considered. After being badgered by his coworker into obtaining a day-planner device, he ends up instead with a full-blown computer system of DOOM!
Meanwhile, on the second floor, the future crown princess of the known universe and daughter of the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, moves in and starts playing the cello. Sorry, sorry… I watch Twin Peaks and wonder why Muad’Dib is investigating murder in Washington state too.
Our hapless hero decides, once he’s gotten a taste of the good life his computer is providing, that he cannot be constrained by his lack of data anymore, and so gets himself a modem (remember when you used to have to put the handset in the cradle??) and dials into his employer’s mainframe. This results in a scary schematic-flashing-sequence which anyone who knows anything about movies about computers knows is the precursor to something potentially disastrous. In this case; fire.
What follows is what should follow when you spill booze on your computer: IT COMES TO LIFE AND STARTS WRITING POP MUSIC.
- Although, it isn’t very good.
The compositional efforts of the now semi-sentient computer charm the living crap out of the upstairs cellist. Cause you know there’s nothing a person who has devoted their life to classical music likes more than low-rent Midi compositions. For reals.
Eventually, Miles and Irul… Madeline make friends, and then some. The rub is that the computer, now sporting a full-blown personality, is also sporting full-blown plastic (as opposed to wood) for the upstairs ladyfriend and starts totally fucking with Miles to get back at him for having appendages with which to embrace the object of their mutual affection.
He (of course the computer is a boy, because these were the 80’s and a lesbian computer-human romance was just one step too far dammit) starts by setting off Miles’ pager at a concert where the cellist is plying her craft. Next comes calling Miles at work to prevent him from speaking to Madeline. Sending various appliances into attack-mode, and then finally going on an identity theft spree which labels his erstwhile owner as a bankrupt, violent, reprobate to every credit card terminal, radio station, and cash register in greater San Francisco.
Eventually, the computer comes to the realization that without those limbs, there’s probably not much chance of talking Madeline into taking him seriously as a romantic candidate, and sends (via the intertubes still in their babyhood) 40 thousand volts of electricity around the world on a collision course straight for his wee little motherboard. Then Miles and Edgar (why we learn this is his name so late in the movie is beyond reckoning) have a tender moment before computer guts and glass shoot across the screen in a glorious display that makes me want to run out and find a stick of dynamite and an ancient monitor, like hard
Ultimately, Miles and Madeline ride off into the sunset in his Volvo with bicycles strapped to the top all in a dither about the lack of phones and tvs and technology they are about to enjoy. A love story for Luddites if ever there was one.
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