Blu-ray Review: Electric Dreams

Full review on Starburst.

The subject matter of this insane '80s movie, featuring a love triangle between an architect, his new computer, and his neighbour, might just scrape by as plausible if rejigged for a modern movie about AI, along the lines of Spike Jonze’s Her, but it’s downright ludicrous when it’s 1980s technology we’re dealing with. 

Thankfully, though, the film knows its own silliness and plays everything with tongue firmly in cheek; Rusty Lemorande’s script is chock-full of gags which play on the daftness of the computer’s desire for love.

But it’s Steve Barron’s direction that really makes Electric Dreams, well, unique. The director of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean video applies that aesthetic sensibility to his first feature, shooting it as a ninety-minute music video; sweeping close-ups of computer parts are intercut with shots of Miles looking forlorn and moody, edited to the blaring sounds of ‘80s synthpop. 

The result is a visually and aurally cluttered film, in an enjoyably cheesy way, but the scenes that develop Miles and Madeline’s relationship are less competently handled; Barron’s stylistic focus means that the characters, like those in a music video, never step out from being 2D archetypes into rounded people we can believe in.