In this entry of my Revisited series (where I’m going on the record with a movie I’ve seen before but never written about), I’m looking at a movie of which its own director has said, “Some loathe it and others are willing to die for it.” Spoiler alert, I am definitely in the latter camp. *Additional Note: Speaking of spoilers, there are plenty in the review, as this movie is 37 years old.*
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! (1984)
dir. W. D. Richter
Rated: PG
image: ©1984 20th Century Fox
It’s all about the world building. In an interview from a few years ago, director W.D. Richter gave a lot of the credit for the success of his long-standing cult favorite The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! to screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch’s unusually long gestation period on the project. The interview was, in part, a way for Richter to get on the record during a legal battle between himself and Rauch against MGM, which was planning a television series reboot of Buckaroo with director Kevin Smith, without Richter or Rauch’s permission. (Everybody ended up walking away from the project because of the legal issues, which ultimately killed it.)
In the interview, Richter talks at length about how Rauch constructed a whole Buckaroo Banzai universe in his head over the period of a decade, before writing the script that would become the movie. As a result, the film is crammed with meticulous detail that gives the world of Buckaroo a lived-in feel. You get the sense as you watch it that there are many untold tales revolving around Buckaroo, the brain surgeon/scientist/rock star, on the scale of something like the MCU or Star Wars. During the movie, we see both a comic book based on Buckaroo’s exploits, as well as an arcade video game where you, too, can play as Buckaroo Banzai.
Released in the late summer of 1984, Buckaroo Banzai was a financial disaster. The movie made only a little over six million dollars against its 17-million-dollar budget. But the wacky sci-fi yarn built a strong cult following on home video. There are now multiple generations of fans lamenting that we’ll most likely never see the sequel that was teased at the end of the movie, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. The title alone makes one’s imagination run wild!
In the opening minutes of the picture, we learn, through introductory paragraphs of text, that Buckaroo Banzai was born of an American mother and a Japanese father – there’s even an amusing joke in the text about his heritage predicting a key attribute about the adventurer’s life: he was born going two directions at once. An exposition dump via text like this one can often times feel like a lazy attempt by a studio to explain things to an audience it doesn’t trust to be smart enough to figure things out on their own. This one works though, because, like the movie itself, it’s crammed with so much outlandish information. It perfectly sets the tone for what’s to follow.
Brilliant neurosurgeon Buckaroo Banzai, bored with the lack of challenges that his medical career was providing, began studying martial arts and particle physics with the help of his cadre of collaborators, who also all perform together as a rock group: Buckaroo Banzai and The Hong Kong Cavaliers. Buckaroo and friends unintentionally start a galactic and interdimensional incident when our hero briefly crosses into the 8th dimension via the oscillation overthruster. The technology was refined at the Banzai Institute, with the help of Buckaroo’s mentor and late father’s colleague, Dr. Tohichi Hikita.
In possibly the wackiest trigger to a flashback in movie history, we learn that in 1938, Dr. Hikita’s research partner, Dr. Emilio Lizardo, briefly glimpsed the 8th dimension when an early oscillation overthruster test went awry. Dr. Lizardo’s body was invaded by a creature known as Lord John Whorfin. The evil Lord Whorfin is a Red Lectroid from Planet 10, and he and his followers were imprisoned within the 8th dimension when a group of revolutionaries, the Black Lectroids, overthrew Whorfin’s totalitarian regime. When Lizardo/Whorfin learns that Banzai & Co. have perfected the overthruster, he puts a plan in action to steal it, with the help of his followers through their front organization, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems. Whorfin wants to use the overthruster to free his army of baddies from the 8th dimension, so he can destroy the Black Lectroids and secure total galactic domination.
All of that delightful goofiness apparently wasn’t enough for screenwriter and Banzai mastermind Rauch, so he also added a subplot tying together the Lectroid’s invasion of earth in 1938, in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, and Orson Welles’s infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. That’s one of Buckaroo Banzai’s many charms; it’s continually blossoming with new and ever-stranger developments and ideas.
Along the way, we meet the emotionally fragile Penny Priddy, who is so distraught that she attempts suicide during a Hong Kong Cavaliers rock show. Buckaroo’s empathy and kindness are so attuned that he can sense when one person in a roomful of excited concert-goers isn’t having a good time. He promptly stops the show in order to help.
The movie’s upbeat attitude and Buckaroo’s unflappable kindness and compassion are attributes that have contributed to the film’s staying power. As the crowd – and even a few of the Hong Kong Cavaliers – begin to mock Penny for breaking the electric vibe of the show, Buckaroo scolds them for their callousness. “Don’t be mean,” the Zen-like Buckaroo says from the stage, before delivering a gleefully cheesy bit of advice, which serves as the philosophical heart of the whole movie: “We don’t have to be mean ‘cause, remember, no matter where you go…there you are.”
The fact that Buckaroo’s acolytes often don’t show their mentor’s patience and sympathy makes the group’s relationships to one another feel more lived-in and real. Some in the group, like Perfect Tommy and Reno Nevada, often can’t contain their doubt at the master’s decisions. It creates a sort of Jesus-and-the-apostles dynamic, wherein the sheep often question the shepherd, much to the latter’s consternation. It’s a leitmotif of the movie, since Lord John Whorfin’s followers also roll their eyes whenever the dictator begins his incessant monologuing.
Buckaroo Banzai also feels special because you get the immediate sense that every person involved in its creation was 100% committed to the project. That’s most evident from the absolute go-for-broke performances from every actor on screen. Peter Weller is unflappable and exudes a geeky-cool chic as the man, the myth, the legend, Buckaroo Banzai. Character actor – and, of course, the voice of Mr. Krabs – Clancy Brown has loads of country charm as Buckaroo’s right-hand man, Rawhide.
Admittedly, this movie is a total guy-fest, but Ellen Barkin doesn’t waste a moment of the limited screen time she has as Penny Priddy. The kooky, soap-operatic subplot about Penny being separated at birth from her twin sister – who just so happens to be Buckaroo’s (dead? estranged?) wife (he only says, “She’s not around anymore,” as an explanation) – is comically brilliant, and Barkin completely sells the mysterious pull she feels toward Buckaroo.
On the evil side of the ledger are some legendary actors chewing herculean amounts of scenery. Dan Hedaya is given woefully little to do as John Gomez, one of Whorfin’s goons, but Christopher Lloyd as John Bigbooté – “IT’S BIGBOO-TAY!” – and Vincent Schiavelli as John O’Connor are both big fun. In a preview of his unhinged performance as the nefarious Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Lloyd bursts out with “DAMN JOHN WHORFIN AND THE HORSE HE RODE IN ON!” when the lackey has grown tired of his master’s increasingly erratic behavior.
John Lithgow takes the idea of erratic behavior to new heights as Dr. Lizardo/Lord John Whorfin. Lizardo is Italian, and Lithgow’s gloriously over-the-top Italian accent is a thing of beauty. The character’s wild shock of hair and disgustingly stained teeth add to his mystique, and Lithgow holds nothing back. He is totally invested as the megalomaniac to rival Adolph Hitler.
Then there’s Jeff Goldblum’s wild Howdy Doody inspired cowboy getup. You can’t take your eyes off of it.
Some elements of the 35+-year-old movie haven’t aged well. Canadian actor Robert Ito, who is of Japanese ancestry, is asked to do a stereotypical Japanese accent here. Indeed, the idea of Buckaroo as a half-Japanese character, especially with actor Peter Weller playing the role, a man who doesn’t even remotely look Japanese, smacks of white people exoticizing Asian culture for their own fun and profit.
Still, the overall message of the film is one of hope and optimism. I couldn’t help but notice that the evil Red Lectroids are all white men, while the freedom-fighter Black Lectroids – who all have Jamaican accents – are Black. A young Black kid, Scooter, and his dad, Casper – aficionados of other cult-classic 1980s box office bombs will recognize actor Bill Henderson as The Cop from Clue – come to Buckaroo’s rescue when he sends out a distress radio signal. A Latinx actor portrays Reno Nevada, one of Buckaroo’s inner circle. As a product of mid-1980s filmmaking, Buckaroo Banzai is a mostly white-centered tale, but the movie does make room for diversity, even if only at the edges of the frame.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! is a complete hoot and a joyous movie-watching experience. (How could it not be when Peter Weller, as Buckaroo, exclaims, with absolute conviction, “The deuce you say!” upon learning that the Red Lectroids have kidnapped his mentor, Professor Hikita.) The meticulously crafted world of Buckaroo Banzai unlocks seemingly endless mysteries and clever minutia. I see something new each time I come back to it.
(Plus, there’s that iconic synthesizer-focused theme song from Michael Boddicker, and that magically goofy end-credits sequence.)
Why it got 4.5 stars:
- I don’t think I can state it any better than legendary New York Times critic Vincent Canby: Buckaroo Banzai is “pure, nutty fun." If you allow yourself to fall into its rhythm, it’s hard not to have a great time with it.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- I was given a DVD copy of Buckaroo Banzai by my now-wife’s stepfather about 10 years ago. I watched it, and enjoyed it, but it took a few screenings before I really got on it’s wavelength. Rae hates it, which I find hilarious. One more way I can drive her mad with my taste in movies!
- There are dozens of tiny, brilliant moments in the movie. I tried, seemingly as hard as I could, to scribble a word or two about each one in my notes as I watched it this time, in preparation for the review. Here are a few:
- The medical mumbo jumbo that Weller and Goldblum’s characters sling back and forth during a surgery that Buckaroo is assisting in is pure gold.
- Those (somewhat hokey) old school CGI graphics of the 8th dimension are incredibly endearing.
- Some day I’ll do some hard research into the first movie that featured that sound effect of a cricket to signify a dying car engine. Buckaroo Banzai might be a contender…
- “Lithium is no longer available on credit.” HA!
- Buckaroo licking the palm of his hand and smacking it on Professor Hikita’s forehead in order to give his mentor the formula he wrote on his hand is hilarious.
- Yakov Smirnoff is in this movie! As an advisor to the POTUS!
- Speaking of the president: he’s like a 1950s sci-fi movie’s idea of a president. He also vaguely resembles Orson Welles as the older version of his character in Citizen Kane. The “Declaration of War (Short Form)” bit is pure Dr. Strangelove.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
I think Buckaroo Banzai is still popular on the midnight movie circuit. Hopefully I’ll be able to experience it that way at some point. It’s available for rent and sale on most digital platforms. I watched it the (I can’t believe I’m about to type this) old-fashioned way, on DVD.