Some films make such a contemporary take on social anxieties that, once the years move on, they effectively become museum pieces: frozen as if in amber, so directly pinned to the time of their creation that they cannot help but date. That certainly seems the case with Electric Dreams, a 1984 comedy directed by Steve Barron, that sees a nervous young architect compete for a woman’s affections with his personal computer.

Miles (Lenny Van Dohlen) is a architect in question, hoping to make the big time with a new earthquake-proof brick design. He is persuaded to buy a personal computer to help with his work, and after an unintended accident involving a bottle of champagne his computer becomes self-aware. When Miles grows attracted to his new neighbour – a cellist named Madeline (Virginia Madsen) – his computer actively attempts to court her in his place.

Steve Barron is an interesting director. He worked the camera on Ridley Scott’s The Duellists (1977), and made his break directing music videos for a variety of top 1980s talent including Michael Jackson, Madonna, a-Ha, David Bowie, and the Human League. Electric Dreams was his first directing feature. He subsequently did a lot of work with Jim Henson, including running the second unit on Labyrinth (1986), helming several episodes of The Storyteller (1987), and directing the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film (1990). He has often struck me as a director with a strong visual talent, but a poor ability to choose good projects, as evidenced by his work directing Coneheads (1993), The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), and others. His main influence here appears to be in the music: Electric Dreams is a showcase for typically 1980s pop tunes, including a hugely successful title theme by Giorgio Moroder and the Human League’s Phil Oakey. Even now, decades after the fact, the soundtrack album – which also features Jeff Lynne, Culture Club, and Heaven 17 – is one of the more iconic of its year.

The film’s attempt to capitalise on the popular growth of personal computers is matched by an almost charming naïveté about what the computers of 1984 were capable of doing. Its focus on the potential outcome of artificial intelligence is rather timely in the 21st century, as the term is thrown around as a hollow buzz word and actual computers are nowhere close to what Miles’ computer was saying and doing here.

One of the film’s biggest liabilities is Lenny Van Dohlen, who comes across as remarkably stiff and awkward as Miles. The film is intended as a romantic comedy, and he does not come across as either romantic nor funny. He is working with relatively poor material, which doesn’t help his case: Miles effectively woos a girl through deceit, and while the script threatens him with having his secret found out (his romantic songs and overtures towards Madeline are the work of his computer and not him) he never actually suffers any real consequences for his behaviour.

Virginia Madsen is appealing as Madeline, but lacks much in the way of agency or material. Maxwell Caulfield has a supporting role as an apparent romantic rival, but either his scenes were mostly edited out or his role was under-written to the point of redundancy.

Where the film works is in the scenes involving musical performances, notably a very well-edited sequence in which Madeline practices a piece of music on her cello and Miles’ computer joins in – each hearing the other’s performance through an air vent. The photography and editing give the scene an energy that really lifts the entire film around it – Steve Barron really was one of the finest music video directors of the 1980s, and scenes like this really showcase him at his best.

Some of the film’s other interesting scenes are the ones that flirt with the computer – which ultimately names itself Edgar – threatening Miles with violence or even death. There’s a weird sense that these moments are not intended to be frightening, but that Barron has over-shot somewhat when directing them. In places Edgar becomes genuinely unsettling: not just a romantic rival, but an obsessive stalker intent upon murdering the other suitor. There is a whole film sitting there worth exploring by some future filmmaker – I think the concept is ripe for a remake – but as it is here it’s slightly weird and underdeveloped.

It is fair to describe Electric Dreams as rather mediocre, and it is difficult to imagine anybody coming to the film today finding it to be anything beyond a historical artefact. Nostalgia does work in mysterious ways, however, and I strongly suspect that any viewer old enough to have been sucked into it back in 1984 will still be rather taken by its charms – even if 90 per cent of said charm is in the catchy theme song.