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The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Special Edition) Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 41 Reviews)

Not for everyone, but then nothing truly brilliant is for everyone
Great DVD with tons of features of one of the best '80s sci-fi B-movies. Why not THE best? The Terminator, Repo Man, Real Genius... there were lots back then. If you're a fan of those, you should definitely check this out.

up in the air, junior birdman
This is totally a cult movie, so if you're into straightforward, clearly painted storylines and conventional scripts, I suggest this is not your film. This would be more for the appreciators of Monty Python or anything sort of avant-gard, although I must say it bears no resemblance to any of the Pythons - it just takes itself no more seriously than any of those movies. Years ago I was weekend projectionist for a neat little art-house theatre in northern Vermont, and showed this movie. The house was very evenly split down the middle between the "get-its" and the "don't-get-its"; one side was practically rolling on the floor from all the "in" jokes and the other side sat stone-faced, completely in the dark. After purchasing a dvd of it not too long ago, I discovered there really was more to it, and W.D. Richter apparently harboured ambitions to develop a minor franchise of Buckaroo Banzai - in the special features we learn about a diabolical megalomaniac who has it in for everything Banzai - but this was news to me, twenty-plus years after becoming a Banzai-ite. At any rate, also in the special features a good number of the cast is quizzed on what it's all about, and the consensus is - nobody knows. More to the point, nobody really seems to care. This is a movie to just enjoy without trying to make too much sense of it. Certainly everybody concerned seems to have abdicated investigation and are all just having a hell of a good time. John Lithgow, as the evil John Whorfin, has occupied the body of 40s forward-thinking scientist and specialist in particle physics, Dr. Emilio Lizardo. The occupation has driven the good Dr. Lizardo mad, and when the movie commences, he is residing at a hospital for the criminally insane in New Jersey. Our hero, Buckaroo Banzai (played with commendable restraint by Peter Weller, who still looks at times as though he can barely contain himself)has just gone through a mountain in Nevada with his jet car, aided by his Oscillation Overthruster, and has become the darling of the entire U.S. population. Dr. Lizardo, watching this breakthrough on TV in the insane asylum, breaks out of the place with remarkably little resistance to find the Overthruster and reassemble his team so that they can blast back to the Eighth Dimension where they came from. (I never said it would be easy to synopsize.) So much goes on in this - Dr. Lizardo's bunch, the Red Lectroids, are the bad guys and, to further complicate things, are all named John, and the good guys - chasing them in spaceships that look like big seashells - are a bunch of apparent Rastafarians called Black Lectroids. Come to think of it, they're all named John too, including the women. Buckaroo and his band - quite literally a band, they play rock-and-roll gigs when they're not saving the world - the Hong Kong Cavaliers (honestly, I'm not making any of this stuff up) are recruited to oust the Red Lectroids from Earth or else -or the Black Lectroids will take serious steps. It gets more and more involved - in the way of cult movies, multiple viewings will give a much clearer overview - but some schtick that is howlingly funny is easily overlooked because of the amount of business happening. At one point in the insane asylum, Dr. Lizardo is sorting through a mountain of debris in his room - don't miss the butterfly net that falls by his bed - while an ethereal, airport-announcer female voice announces over the loudspeaker, "Lithium is no longer available on credit." One of the other inmates is playing a Buckaroo Banzai pinball machine. Two hunters in another section of the movie find a Buckaroo Banzai comic book in the weeds. I have never really found anybody, other than the two guys who introduced me to the movie, who quite got what I did from this movie, but if you're willing to suspend your disbelief totally and just roll with what happens, you will probably enjoy it. At least cut it some slack for all the wonderfully over-the-top performances - it's quite clear that the cast is having a whopping good time.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
If you like sci-fi with comedy added you will love this movie. Some of the dialog you can't believe is really said with a straight face.
Our hero is not only a scientist,advises the President, a rock star with his own band, whoos and wins the girl and of course travels across the 8 dimension. This is a must have movie as far as I am concerned.

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