Electric Dreams (1984) is the story of a computer that gains sentience and falls in love. Really. Like the 80’s version of Her (2013).
Our protagonist is an architect named Miles, played by Lenny Von Dohlen (Twin Peaks) who is trying to develop a new kind of brick shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece. He hopes this new brick will make buildings more resistant to earthquakes. His upstairs neighbor is a beautiful cellist, played by Virginia Madsen (Hot to Trot, Dune, Candyman). Miles is shy and doesn’t know jack about music, so he starts building a home computer to help him build his brick. For unknown reasons, he hooks his little computer up to run pretty much every aspect of his home, and even gives it speech synthesis. One dark night, he tries to download the entire mainframe from his work and, at the same time, spills champagne on the mother board. Boom! Instant sentient AI. Bring on the Terminators.
The now-sentient computer, named Edgar, is adorable (you know, for a computer). It makes happy faces on its monitor and calls Miles “Moles” because he typed his name incorrectly at startup. Then it falls in love with the cellist upstairs, and we’ve got a weird love triangle going on, even for an 80’s flick. Eventually, he realizes that love means giving up (what the fuck?) and he suicides himself so the humans can fuck each other.
The film is the directorial debut of Steve Barron, who did a bunch of 80’s music videos, including Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” and later directed the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). It was written and produced by Rusty Lemorande, who went on to co-write and co-produce Michael Jackson’s Captain EO (1986). Also watch for, in a brief minor role, an appearance by Maxwell Caulfield (Boys Next Door, Empire Records).
Electric Dreams is a cute, enjoyable little sci-fi rom-com that still has charm four decades after it was made.
