produced by robert lantos & stephen j . roth
directed by douglas williams
mpaa : not rated ( though from language , violence , medical-gross-outs , and sexual content , i’d put it at pg )
though made in canada , ” overdrawn at the memory bank ” traces its roots to the bbc school of film production .
using , for the most part , cheap computer and video special effects , chyron text , wildlife documentary footage , and sets that are sometimes obviously faked up , it nonetheless manages to tell a good enough science fiction story that by the time you’re twenty minutes into it , you should be hooked .
raul julia plays aram fingal , a drone data processing worker for novicorp whose active imagination and predilection for hacking gets him into trouble with authority .
caught watching ” casablanca ” on his desk monitor , fingal is sentenced to ” doppling ” rehabilitation–he is to spend forty-eight hours in the body of a baboon .
( how exactly this is supposed to rehabilitate him is anybody’s guess . )
as it happens , thanks to a visiting schoolboy’s prank , his body is temporarily misplaced , and his mind has to be shunted into the central computer to keep him alive until they can find it .
as time ticks away before his memory cube self-destructs , the frantic search for his body is on . . . while
fingal first creates a virtual reality fantasy world , then finds there’s no better way to hack the system than from the inside .
during the chaos , computer technician apollonia james ( linda griffiths ) maintains contact with fingal through a datalink , manifesting several different times to offer advice or warnings .
over the course of their interactions , interest on both their parts grows into a budding romance .
given that ” casablanca ” is fingal’s favorite film , and the basis for his fantasy world , a great deal of the movie is homage to ” casablanca ” .
in fact , the humphrey bogart and peter lorre characters make appearances ( played by julia in a dual role and louis negin , respectively ) in a bar called ” the place ” .
julia’s portrayal of bogart is passable , and avoids becoming the ” schweethaat ” -spouting parody seen in cartoons .
negin’s peter lorre is quite credible , and easily the best peter lorre i’ve ever seen who wasn’t the real thing .
the two of them , as characters created by fingal’s imagination , serve as aspects of his personality , driving him on in his quest to hack the computer system .
those aren’t the only casablanca characters to put in appearances .
the sydney greenstreet character also happens to be around . . . as ” the fat man ” , the alternate aspect of the film’s main villain , the novicorp chairman ( donald c . moore ) .
while fingal’s body is lost , the fat man tries to stop him from hacking the system . . . with
less than salutory results .
it’s interesting to note the futuristic slang words that are thrown about left and right during the film , in the best golden-age science fiction tradition .
words like ” dopple ” , ” psychist ” , ” computech ” , ” cinema ” , and ” reconst ” are apparently in common use .
and while people of today may well laugh at fourteen years past’s idea of futuristic data processing clerks , some aspects of this film are surprisingly perfectly in keeping with the way we think of ” virtual reality ” today .
as cyberpunk films go , this may not be a staple of the genre , but it’s definitely recommended viewing .
the special effects are very primitive , placing this production in the realm of low-to-medium-budget television .
the music is completely electronic-synthesized , which fits the low budget but isn’t really out of keeping with the genre .
however , the writing quite makes up for it .
there are some very funny moments , and quite a few little in-jokes that one needs to have seen ” casablanca ” to appreciate properly .
all in all , i give ” overdrawn at the memory bank ” a .