Electric Dreams

Long before there was Spike Jonze's Her, there was another quirky take on “computer dating” with sentient AI, Steve Barron’s largely forgotten Electric Dreams. Lenny Von Dohlen is pitch-perfect as Miles (I think David Schwimmer based his entire acting style on this performance.) Miles is an awkward guy who buys a personal computer to help him develop a prototype that will enable buildings to withstand earthquakes. Through an improbable only-in-the-'80s happenstance, the computer becomes a self-aware entity with the voice of Bud Court. But when the computer assists in wooing Miles' sexy cellist neighbor Cyrano-style via synth-pop music, it soon develops feelings for Madeline (Virginia Madsen) and wants to get Miles out of the way. The film predicts nearly everything we worry about today regarding our reliance on devices and technology—it just misses a shot of a couple in bed with their backs to each other, playing with their separate digital watches or pocket calculators.

The film's co-producer and writer, Rusty Lemorande, was an executive at Orion Pictures. He, apparently, was the guy who had the idea to add the gopher puppet into Caddyshack. He went on to work with Barbra Streisand, co-producing Yentl with her and Larry DeWaay. This is perhaps why there is so much music in Electric Dreams—his first screenplay, which he finished writing while working on Yentl. Lemorande and DeWaay hired Steve Barron to direct the film based on his experience in music videos. Barron's camera is way too busy—there are at least twenty too many tracking and boom shots sweeping around and over the computer and other household objects—but at least the movie isn't dull to look at. The soundtrack features contributions from '80s stalwarts Giorgio Moroder, Jeff Lynne, and The Culture Club, and the way these songs are integrated into the narrative helps prop up the underdeveloped story.