![]() I’m constantly impressed by the fact that it’s a movie we’re expected to keep up with even though there’s no possible way we really can. ![]() To not to dumb down any of the film’s 104 minutes is something of a milestone. Truly, this is a movie that defies explanation, because even just listing the plot moments like this doesn’t make any sense, even though that is actually what happens. There’s ALSO there’s this woman named Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin) who is at one of Banzai’s shows and tries to kill herself because some guy stood her up, who happens to also be the long lost twin sister of Banzai’s late wife who was murdered by an evil guy. Sidney Zweibel, who everybody calls New Jersey (played by Jeff Goldblum) and he is super nerdy. Also, a brain surgeon colleague of Banzai’s gets brought into the group, Dr. There are several of these guys, but their leader in Whorfin’s stead is John Bigbooté, played by Christopher Lloyd.Īnd as if THAT weren’t enough, the Black Lectroids plan to destroy Earth to keep Whorfin and company from returning to Planet 10, so Banzai and the Cavaliers have to stop this, all the while the government wants to take the Lectroids’ technology for themselves. Everybody from Planet 10 has the name John for some reason, and slowly many other Red Lectroids had come into our dimension, setting up a fake science company called Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems waiting for someone to invent the technology needed to return to Planet 10 to defeat the Black Lectroids who had banished them. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow), who once tried to replicate the same experiment in the ’30s and ended up being attacked by Red Lectroids, the alien species from Planet 10 residing in the 8th Dimension, and his brilliant, Italian brain is infected by the Red Lectroid’s leader, Lord John Whorfin. As the movie begins, he and his sidekicks/research assistants/band members, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, are preparing to test a new rocket-powered car utilizing his invention, the Oscillation Overthruster, and he goes careening into a mountain but instead of crashing, he breaks through into the 8th dimension and discovers alien life on Earth but not of it. This is a world where everyone knows who Buckaroo Banzai is, and he’s amazingly good at everything. The titular Buckaroo Banzai (played amazingly well and with much badassness by Peter Weller) is a brain surgeon, martial arts master, molecular physicist, secret agent, comic book hero, and rock star all rolled into one. The story – near as I can figure – is an alien invasion plot. Lesser (or greater, let’s be honest) movies usually spoon-feed the audience the “pertinent” information, but there’s a whole life and set of given circumstances going on here that we only barely get to know. Richter (a fairly prolific screenwriter) purposely made an almost impenetrable movie that almost required footnotes for all the things in it. In fact, the writer Earl Mac Rauch and the director W.D. But that’s kind of the beautiful thing about the movie – it doesn’t need you to understand it to enjoy it and kind of get what it is. If you’d seen the above trailer, would you have any idea what the movie’s about? I sure wouldn’t. I mean, what is it? An action movie? A sci-fi movie? A comedy? A pastiche? Even the film’s trailer doesn’t even know what to do with it. After having seen the title in TV Guide listings and the VHS box on store shelves as a kid, I finally saw this movie for the first time a few years ago and I was CON-FUSED. Just… I mean, that title alone is a wonder of modern wordsmithery. One of those movies is 1984’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. I watch a lot of weird movies (I write about many of them here in the Schlock & Awe column), but few are the weird movies that are utterly baffling, nearly incomprehensible, but completely undeniable.
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