Electric Dreams is a
1984-Events:* The Walt Disney Company founds Touchstone Pictures to release movies with subject matter deemed inappropriate for the Disney name.*Tri-Star Pictures, a joint venture of Columbia Pictures, HBO, and CBS, releases its first film....
BritishThe United Kingdom has had a large impact on modern cinema and has one the most respected film industries in the world. Despite a history of successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity and the influences of American and European cinema, although it...
-
AmericanThe cinema of the United States has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
comedy/drama/romance/science fiction film set in San Francisco,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
, that depicts a love triangle between a man, a woman, and a home computer. It stars
Lenny Von DohlenLenny Von Dohlen is an American film and stage actor, best known for his performance as Harold Smith in Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
,
Virginia MadsenVirginia Madsen is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience. Two decades later, she once again became known after an Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2004 film Sideways...
, and
Bud CortBud Cort is an American film and stage actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his portrayal of Harold from Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude.-Early life:...
and was directed by
Steve BarronSteve Barron is a director and producer, best known for directing the films Coneheads , Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the innovative music video for a-ha's "Take on Me"....
. It was the first film released by the Virgin Films production company.
The soundtrack features music from prominent popular musicians of the time, being among the movies of this generation that actively explored the commercial link between a movie and its soundtrack.
Electric Dreams is a
1984-Events:* The Walt Disney Company founds Touchstone Pictures to release movies with subject matter deemed inappropriate for the Disney name.*Tri-Star Pictures, a joint venture of Columbia Pictures, HBO, and CBS, releases its first film....
BritishThe United Kingdom has had a large impact on modern cinema and has one the most respected film industries in the world. Despite a history of successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity and the influences of American and European cinema, although it...
-
AmericanThe cinema of the United States has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
comedy/drama/romance/science fiction film set in San Francisco,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
, that depicts a love triangle between a man, a woman, and a home computer. It stars
Lenny Von DohlenLenny Von Dohlen is an American film and stage actor, best known for his performance as Harold Smith in Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
,
Virginia MadsenVirginia Madsen is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience. Two decades later, she once again became known after an Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2004 film Sideways...
, and
Bud CortBud Cort is an American film and stage actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his portrayal of Harold from Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude.-Early life:...
and was directed by
Steve BarronSteve Barron is a director and producer, best known for directing the films Coneheads , Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the innovative music video for a-ha's "Take on Me"....
. It was the first film released by the Virgin Films production company.
The soundtrack features music from prominent popular musicians of the time, being among the movies of this generation that actively explored the commercial link between a movie and its soundtrack. The soundtrack album
Electric DreamsElectric Dreams is a soundtrack album from the movie Electric Dreams.Several popular rock and New Wave musicians of the 1980s contributed original music to the film's soundtrack. It was available throughout Europe but remained unreleased on compact disc in the U.S...
was re-issued on CD in 1998.
The
VHSVideo Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it...
recording of this movie is rare. It was released in 1984 and again in 1991, but has not been manufactured since the mid-1990s. MGM Home Video released a
LaserdiscThe Laserdisc is an obsolete home video disc format, and was the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially marketed as Discovision in 1978, the technology was licensed and sold as Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Videodisc, Laservision, Disco-Vision, DiscoVision, and MCA...
in America in the early nineties, and Warner Bros released a
Video CDVideo CD is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc...
version for the
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, lying north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands. At , Singapore is a microstate and the smallest nation in Southeast...
market in 2001, but both are out of print. The movie was released to
Region 2DVD region codes are a DRM technique designed to allow motion picture studios to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and, price; according to the region...
DVD on April 6, 2009.
Plot
The story opens with Miles Harding (Von Dohlen), an architect who envisions a brick shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece that could enable buildings to withstand earthquakes. Seeking a way to get organized, he buys a home computer (made by the fictitious company Pinecone Computers) to help him develop his ideas. Although he is initially unsure that he will even be able to correctly operate the computer, he later buys numerous extra gadgets that were not necessary for his work, such as switches to control household appliances like the blender, a speech synthesizer, and a microphone. The computer (Cort) addresses Miles as "Moles", because Miles mistyped his name during the initial set-up.
When Miles attempts to download data from a mainframe computer at work, the computer begins to overheat. In a state of panic, Miles pours a nearby bottle of champagne over the machine, which brings the computer to life.
The remainder of the movie deals with a love triangle between Miles, his computer (which identifies its own name as "Edgar" at the end of the movie), and Miles' neighbor, an attractive cellist named Madeline (Madsen). Edgar increasingly invades Miles' affairs leading to several invasions into his life away from the house.
Eventually, Edgar accepts Madeline and Miles' love for each other, and appears to commit suicide by sending a large electric current through its acoustic coupler, around the world, and back to itself. In the final scene, a pop song ("
Together in Electric Dreams"Together in Electric Dreams" is a song by the British singer and composer Philip Oakey and producer Giorgio Moroder. It was written by Oakey and Moroder and recorded for the original soundtrack of the 1984 film Electric Dreams....
") written by Edgar as a tribute to Miles and Madeline plays on radio stations around the United States.
Cast
- Lenny Von Dohlen
Lenny Von Dohlen is an American film and stage actor, best known for his performance as Harold Smith in Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
as Miles Harding
- Virginia Madsen
Virginia Madsen is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience. Two decades later, she once again became known after an Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2004 film Sideways...
as Madeline Robistat
- Maxwell Caulfield
Maxwell Caulfield is a British-born but mostly United States-based film, stage and television actor.- Early life :...
as Bill
- Bud Cort
Bud Cort is an American film and stage actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his portrayal of Harold from Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude.-Early life:...
as Voice of Edgar
- Don Fellows
Don Fellows was an American actor, born in Salt Lake City, Utah, who spent the bulk of his career acting in England, mostly in television....
as Mr. Ryley
- Miriam Margolyes
Miriam Margolyes OBE is an English actress and voice artist.Margolyes earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in The Age of Innocence ....
as Ticket Girl
- Giorgio Moroder
Giorgio Moroder is a three-time Oscar winning Italian record producer, songwriter and performer. His work with synthesizers during the 1970s and 1980s had a significant influence on new wave, house, techno and electronic music in general...
as Record Producer
Critical reception
The film received a mixed critical reception, with some critics praising it for its overtly MTV-influenced style and others criticizing it for the same reason. Popular American TV critics
Gene SiskelEugene "Gene" Kal Siskel was an American film critic. Alongside colleague Roger Ebert, he pioneered the classic review show Siskel & Ebert at the Movies.-Early life and career:...
and
Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter.He is known for his film review column and for two television programs Sneak Previews and Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel...
gave the film two thumbs up on their TV show
At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger EbertAt the Movies is a movie review television program that aired from 1982 to 1990. It was produced by Tribune Entertainment and created by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who had left Sneak Previews the previous year....
. As of January 2009, it had only a 40% "fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com. It received a generally negative review in the
New York Times, which said that the film failed to "blend and balance its ingredients properly," and that it lost plot elements and taxed credibility.