While ultimately the villain, Jobe is also a victim, and his retreat into the virtual world is entirely understandable.

The Lawnmower Man echoes Frankenstein and a zillion other noble-scientist-whose-experiment-goes-awry movies.

The Lawnmower Man has it all -- melodramatic plot, bad acting, special effects that will undoubtedly seem cheesy in about five minutes and even a concluding sequence in which the usual lofty moral is voiced.

Source material aside, this merely feels like a "dangers of technology" story, without the mind behind the project putting any more thought into it than that.