If you really want to split hairs, the reptilian Red Lectroids in this movie aren’t extra-terrestrials as usually understood. They’re from another dimension instead of another world. But, damn it! They’re still alien to our world, so they and their nefarious schemes still qualify the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8 Dimension! as proper tie-in to this week’s Alien Invasion theme.
Man, I’m honestly at a loss as to how to describe this flick. An absurdist riff on Doc Savage? Does that work? Peter Weller’s Buckaroo may not have the classic pulp hero’s massive physique nor his peculiar hard-top hairstyle, but his being an adventurer cum physicist cum samurai cum test-car driver cum rock star is a quirky mirror of how the Man of Bronze is basically supposed to be superlative at everything. He even has a Fabulous Five-style group of familiars in the Hong Kong Cavaliers whom he turns to for anything he’s not good at.
That’s all already complicated without me even getting into the extra-dimensional Rastafarians, the super-charged use of static electricity and John Lithgow’s aggressively-eccentric performance as Dr. Emilio Lizardo.
Just… just watch the trailer, alright?
Yes, this has Peter “RoboCop” Weller, Jeff “Chaos Theory” Goldblum, Clancy “Kurgan” Brown and Ellen Barkin in roles wholly dissimilar to anything they’d ever play again. The plot rolls out like a feature length game of mad libs with only the most absurd nouns and verbs jotted into the blanks… and I suppose I mean that in a good way.
This really isn’t a movie you can enjoy in piecemeal. I remember catching a random clip of John Lithgow’s tongue-flicking, Eraserhaired creepiness as a kid and getting an honest-to-goodness headache over trying to process what I was watching. The charm of Buckaroo Banzai really lies in starting with the bizarre opening scene of him test-driving a ridiculous device that lets him drive through solid mountains, and then... just tagging along for all the amiable craziness like a backseat passenger in a high speed chase through a circus.
Actually, I’ll phrase it like this. The question of whether or not you’ll enjoy Bucakroo Banzai hinges on how intrinsically amused you are by the notion of Doc Savage randomly playing gigs with a New Wave band in between his adventures. Watch this clip and see how it agrees with your sense of humor…
The whole thing’s has such an unblinking, deadpan tone - - the real humor’s almost more in realizing how ridiculous everything is after the fact. You think about that scene above. The Hong Kong Cavaliers have gone straight to this gig after some out-of-this-world adventure and they stop this raucous rock show because one of them manages to hear one little lonely heart crying through the din? Banzai imparts this platitude on the mic that sounds profound, but doesn’t actually mean anything, and then Ms. Purty gets them all to draw their big automatic weapons because she chickens out on killing herself?
If you get your chuckles from the involvedly morbid and bizarre, that's a joke with perfect structure.
Somehow, somewhere, someway, it evolved into Big Trouble in Little China.
A very apt description of this movie. Nicely written. One of those weird as all get out movies I also have yet to completely decipher and comphrensively explain not only to peeps I know but for myself. Yet for all its absurdity and Jeff Goldblum being...Jeff Goldblum...its a fun ride which must be watched more than once.
Yes, what about that sequel indeed?
I'm a real sucker for films that, upon first blush, seem terrible, but the more you watch (and the multiple times you watch it), you realize that the creator's knew exactly what they were doing. It's a bad movie, that knows it's a bad movie, but never lets the audience know that it knows it's a bad movie. One of the funniest self-referential films ever made, and one of my all-time favs. I would literally kill Alex Navarro if I knew that would mean we'd get to see a Buckaroo Banzai: The Next Generation.
First (and last) Laser Disc movie I ever watched.
And that ending credit track.... SO GOOD!
What ever happened to Perfect Tommy, that's what I wanna know!
Yeah that end credit scene is pretty awesome. There's a reason why Wes Anderson paid homage to Buckaroo Banzi so numerously on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The end sequence in particular:
I remember my dad making me watch this when I was younger (oddly enough, around the same time he made me watch Big Trouble in Little China...) At first it confused the ell out of me with how bizarre it was but I ended up loving it by the end.
One of my favorites for sure, despite the fact that it shouldn't be. It's a lot like Big Trouble in Little China in that way.
According to the DVD bonus features - he was put in cryogenic freeze by Buckaroo Banzai until he was able to find a cure, about 10 years later.
@Count_Zero said:
That was Rawhide, not Perfect Tommy.
@Count_Zero: Additionally, I was also referring less to the character, and more to the actor ;)
Ah, okay. Well, from the looks of his IMDB profile, he's been doing a bunch of TV stuff, and that's pretty much it. His only other "notable" roles was Curly Bill Brocus in Wyatt Earp, and he was in North and South.