Title: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th
Dimension (1984)
Director: W.D. Richter
Cast: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen
Barkin, Christopher Lloyd, Lewis Smith, Robert Ito, Clancy Brown, Vincent
Schiavelli
Review:
Sometimes, a films premise can be so outlandish and weird,
so unpredictable, that movie studios just don’t know how to sell it to the
masses. As a result, these “weird films” usually die a quick death at the box
office. An example is John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China (1986) which
20th Century Fox simply didn’t know what to do with. How the hell do
you sell a movie about a truck driver who ends up fighting Chinese ghosts in an
underground Chinese temple? Exactly! So Big Trouble in Little China went the
way of the dinosaur and disappeared from theaters. These films aren’t necessarily
bad films, sometimes they are just not what audiences are accustomed to, they
can’t be explained in a simple way to the masses. And trust me, this is what
studios prefer: films that can be explained in a sentence, a caption, a
tagline. For Hollywood, when it comes to selling a film, simplicity is of the
essence. If your movie is too complicated a sell, it will either get a limited
release, or go straight to dvd, either way, your film isn’t going to get much
exposure. Often time, the films tagline will let you know that you’re in for a
weird movie, for example the tagline for Big Trouble in Little China was “A
Mystical, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Kung Fu, Monster, Ghost Story!” The
tagline for The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th
Dimension was “Expect the Unexpected. He does.” which I have to admit is
pretty accurate description of the film, and it’s exactly what makes it so damn
watchable. It is extremely unpredictable.
Buckaroo Banzai is a fascinating character in my book. He is
that kind of character that is a genius and therefore knows how to do
practically everything, which became a funny gag to me. Let’s see Buckaroo
Banzai is an excellent brain surgeon, lead singer and lead guitar player
of a rock and roll band called ‘Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers', in
which he also plays the trumpet! Buckaroo is also a scientist who experiments
with interdimensional travel, and ends up being the first human being to travel through solid matter! If you can believe it, he is also a Samurai. He part
times as a super hero, and is also one of the founding fathers of the ‘Banzai
Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information’ amongst other
things that I’m sure are not mentioned in the film. With the help of one Dr.
Hikita, Buckaroo invents the ‘Oscillation Overthruster’ a device that allows
humans to travel through solid matter and into other dimensions! Unfortunately,
it also opens a door for aliens from Planet 10 (called ‘Red Lectroids’) to
escape from the 8th Dimension! Now, these Red Lectroids want to go
back to their home planet so they can rule it with an iron fist and they want
to use Buckaroo’s Oscillation Overthruster to do it! Will Buckaroo and his Hong
Kong Cavaliers find a way to stop them before it’s too late?
So yeah, this movie is fascinating to me in many ways. I
like it because you feel like your falling right smack in the middle of a movie
already in progress; this my friends, is not a film that will stop and explain
every single little thing for you. This movie might have an outlandish plotline
and a comic book premise, but it’s a film that expects you to be quick, to pay
attention, this is not the kind of film where your brain can just wonder off,
you have to pay attention to every single bit of dialog, or you’ll be lost on
your way. Which is what I like about it, it’s a strange thing: a silly movie
written by intelligent people. Yeah, it’s complicated in some ways, but not
impossible to decipher as some might have you believe. Actually, if you stick
with it, the inside jokes can be very rewarding!
Part of what makes this one so enjoyable is the amazing
ensemble cast! We get Peter Weller playing Buckaroo, the main character in the
film. He comes off as totally likable, like he’s this guy who knows everything
about everything, the kind of guy you wish you could be, if you had the brain
of a genius. I wish we could have seen more of his Samurai side. Then we have
his gang of sidekicks, The Hong Kong Cavaliers, all geniuses themselves. One of
them is played by Jeff Goldblum, who for some reason dresses up as a cowboy for
the whole freaking film! Then we get the beautiful Ellen Arkin playing the role
of Penny Priddy, boy does she look hot on this one! She pops up in the film as
this depressed girl who wants to commit suicide, but is saved by Buckaroo, who
detects her sadness in the middle of one of his rock and roll shows. Then we
get a trio of Red Lectroids played by Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya and Vincent
Schiavelli. I mean, what’s not to like about this awesome cast? Everybody seems
to be having a blast here; everybody got the spirit and tone of the film just
right.
There are political
symbolisms to be found in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and I think that in
order to completely understand it, we have to be conscious of the political
climate of the 80’s, the fear of nuclear meltdown and the cold war. This is yet another film that reflects society’s
fears and concerns of the time. Like many of the films of the 80’s (War Games (1983) and The Manhattan Project (1985) for example) the fear of nuclear meltdown at
the hands of the Russians is felt. The “Red Lectroids from Planet 10” are a
clear allusion to the Russians, who were enemies to the Americans at the time. Russians
have always been described as “Reds” by the Americans, same as the villains in
the film are the “Red Lectroids”. The fear of nuclear meltdown is felt in one
scene in which an alien race threatens to destroy Russia, and Perfect Tommy, one
of Buckaroo’s right hand men says “The Russians might misinterpret the attack
as an American strike; they’re already a little trigger happy!” and yet another
allusion to how conscious people where of this nuclear tension can be seen in a
moment in which an alien being tells Buckaroo and his team: “If you fail, we will be forced to help you
destroy yourselves” In this way, the filmmakers point at humanities tendency to
threaten our own existence with nuclear weapons.
The villain of the film is played by the great John Lithgow,
who is running on all cylinders on this one, playing the over the top villain ‘Lord
John Whorfin’ a.k.a. Dr. Lizardo. He is the leader of the Red Lectroids that
are scattered on earth. Lord John Whorfin is portrayed as a crazy fascist
dictator “not unlike your Hitler”. He runs a company called ‘Yoyodine
Propulsion Systems’; which is really a front for the Red Lectroids
headquarters. The Red Lectroid’s headquarters has speakers blaring systematic
brain washing messages like “The only joy is the joy of duty! Work, work, work!”
So this is a film that though funny and
totally zany, is also heavy on political themes. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai might seem
like a crazy movie to some, but at heart, it plays with a lot of important
issues; the filmmakers where just having fun (and lots of it) as they said
their piece with this film.
But I don’t want to make it sound like this is a film with a
boring political agenda or what have you, nope; this movie is tons of zany fun. It is a completely offbeat film, right down to it's closing credits. It has so many ideas going for it that you feel like it is a set up for future
films, as if a whole universe had been created and we were just seeing the tip
of the iceberg. In actuality, more Buckaroo Banzai films were planned, proof of
this is the promised sequel mentioned during the closing credits: Buckaroo
Banzai vs. The World Crime League. They even hint at this planned sequel when they talk about a villain called ‘Hanoi
Xan’, the leader of the World Crime League. Sadly, this sequel never came to be
because the first and only film failed horribly at the box office. Its failure
can be attributed to its convoluted nature, but it also faced tough completion at
the box office! Buckaroo Banzai went up against such smash hits as Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
and Ghostbusters (1984), so it didn’t exactly get it easy at the box office; plus
it was released in only a limited amount of theaters. But as it often happens
with good films, Buckaroo Banzai has found its audience in home video, and its
cult following grows. There’s been various Buckaroo Banzai novels and comic
books released throughout the years, so you might want to look into those of if
you can’t get enough of Buckaroo Banzai. Here’s hoping some day it gets the
reboot treatment, because if you ask me, this things got potential!
Rating: 4 out of 5
