Movie: 'The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension' (1984)

Can you imagine that there's a brilliant physicist? Can you conceive of his also being a neurosurgeon? What about his being world famous? Or his leading a bar band composed of his mysterious and enigmatic friends called 'The Hong Kong Cavaliers'? Yes? An international organisation of followers called the 'Blue Blaze Irregulars'? What if, finally, he had a jetcar that could cross into the Eighth Dimension? If you're still reading, then meet Buckaroo Banzai, scion of Japanese and American geniuses and the only one standing between us and the eventual domination of the Red Lectroids from Planet 10.

'Buckaroo Banzai' is a mad movie, deranged even, and designed to document the adventures of someone who never even existed. Even the director's commentary is an in-universie in-joke. Does that explain how this movie is intended to be?

It's been a while since I did one of these pieces, and 'Buckaroo Banzai' is hard to write about, but shouldn't that also make it easy to talk about too? This movie is intentionally bizarre and some people just can't stand it. I, on the other hand, love it. The world is goopy, fantastic, colourful, gigantic and silly in the playful manner rather than the cynical. Silly and crazy in the cynical manner is unendurable but if it's heartfelt... then it works in a way quite unlike any other.

'Buckaroo Banzai' is a flawed gem, marred by the gloominess of it's last quarter. The cast is full of people about to become famous and infamous: Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Peter Weller, Clancey Brown, Dan Hedaya and... someone so out of his mind that he can be only John Lithgow. That band of theatrical madmen conspire together with the director W.D. Richter to create a new myth based on no comic books, no television, no films and no previous source material. Armed only with a three hundred page manuscript build in preparation they made this loopy epic filled with piles of yellow pigment, errant watermelons and mangos, red-headed villains, bubble wrap masks and wild visuals.

The music is unobtrusive but fitting, the effects are wonderful except for the spaceship mattes, the cast chemistry is offbeat and the plot half-baked. There is no way this movie should work at all, especially with Lithgow hamming it up to high heaven. But it does, and it needs to be seen simply so you can work out who you are.

Dare you take the risk, Monkey Boy?

O.