There’s a scene in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension where Jeff Goldblum’s New Jersey asks why a suspicious watermelon is in the Hong Kong Cavalier’s compound.
He’s told they’ll tell him the purpose of the melon later, but they don’t.
That’s because the watermelon isn’t relevant to the movie.
The cast and crew put that scene in the film as bait. When the studio chief didn’t question them over it, they knew the chief wasn’t monitoring what they were up to.
And, yeah, free from movie dad’s supervision, they let the film run.
Aliens interrogate someone by pouring honey on them. The U.S. President is having back issues and is strapped into a bizarro, big suspension machine.
And then there’s Christopher Lloyd’s John Bigboote’, running around correcting everyone that his name is pronounced “Big-boo-te’,” not “big booty.”
Goofy without turning tacky, irreverent without getting incomprehensible — like Repo Man, this film has its own quasi-reality and aesthetic.
But for many fans, it took years for this film to deliver its little gifts.
Buckaroo Banzai was released in the summer of ’84 along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ghostbusters, and Star Trek III.
Gulp. Those are tough acts to follow for a science-fiction film that’s hard to explain by even those that understand it.
The movie flopped at the box office. Yet in time, the film found a fanbase and become a cult classic.
I will spoil it now and declare that I enjoy this movie.
But it’s not for everyone.
And, no, I don’t mean that in a pompous, elitist way.
Some audiences find it hard to wedge into Buckaroo Banzai’s slipstream.
And with the film’s brand of weird and wtf, you can’t blame the naysayers.
But if Buckaroo Banzai strikes you right, it’s an experience – a comic book sci-fi that bleeds its own form of inimitable charisma.
So if you have just heard about this film or, like me, have been watch-curious but on the fence, let me explain why you could give in to the film’s unusual charms.
So is Buckaroo Banzai a good movie?
The Plot of Buckaroo Banzai:
Dr. Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is a half-Japanese, half-white neuroscientist, physicist, rock star, and test pilot.
He completes a successful run of an experimental device known as the oscillation overthruster (a Flux Capacitor that lets you slip through matter instead of time).
Banzai discovers that the car has traveled through another dimension and that an alien life form has attached itself to his vehicle.
When the fame of his discovery spreads, Banzai and his rock band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, end up in a battle to keep the device from the clutches of the Red Lectroids, an alien race led by the evil Lord John Whorfin (John Lithgow).
And the plot goes on a long way from here.
Will Buckaroo and the Cavaliers defeat Whorfin and save the world?
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- Ellen Barkin as Penny Priddy / Peggy Banzai
- Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Sidney Zweibel / “New Jersey”
- Christopher Lloyd as John Bigbooté
- Lewis Smith as “Perfect Tommy”
- Rosalind Cash as John Emdall
- Robert Ito as Professor Tohichi Hikita
- Michael Santoro as Billy Travers
- Pepe Serna as Reno Nevada
- Ronald Lacey as President Widmark
- Matt Clark as Secretary of Defense McKinley
- Clancy Brown as “Rawhide”
- William Traylor as General Catburd
- Vincent Schiavelli as John O’Connor
- Carl Lumbly as John Parker
- Dan Hedaya as John Gomez
- Mariclare Costello as Senator Margaret Cunningham
- Damon Hines as Scooter Lindley
- Bill Henderson as Casper Lindley
- Billy Vera as “Pinky” Carruthers
- Laura Harrington as Mrs. Eunice Johnson
- Yakov Smirnoff as National Security Advisor
- Jonathan Banks as Lizardo Hospital Guard
The Good Things:
Costumes, +2 Points
The Hong Kong Cavaliers achieve flamboyant whimsical chic. It’s unapologetic and unassuming, part rockabilly style and all 1984.
For unknown reasons, Jeff Goldblum’s New Jersey is a red-topped cowboy with sheepskin leggings.
Buckaroo is like Peewee Herman’s more accomplished cousin. He wears designer suits, but with his red frames and untucked style, he’s more toned-down cool.
And Perfect Tommy is like a bleached-blonde male model. He has so much self-confidence he can get away with pairing a shirt (when he’s wearing one) and a jacket with the same pattern.
Sets and Props, +3 Points
While most sci-fi featuring alien life goes off in gooey and sticky directions, Buckaroo Banzai’s production design found more delightful natural inspirations.
Rather than spherical or metallic alien spaceships (think Flight of the Navigator), aerodynamics and aggression have been left behind. Taking an organic ship approach, the spacecraft in this film resemble seashells.
The lectroid aliens were inspired by what dinosaurs would have evolved into. I have no idea what that means or how someone figures that out, but the lectroids are some half-lizard, half-spider-like men, almost like lobsters covered in rubber.
And the Black Lectroids chill on egregiously tall chairs and tables. Don’t worry about how they got way the hell up there or how they get down – enjoy the spindly, dreamy little cafe they seem to hang out in while they pilot their ship.
It’s all off-kilter, all reeking of care-free creativity.
Well Cast, +3 Points
John Lithgow hams it up as Lord John Whorfin, who loves to give speeches like a military leader and call humans stupid monkeys through a bizarre Italian accent.
But in Lithgow’s hands, Whorfin is just a blowhard. He plays the part like a maniacal vampire but is more hapless than menacing.
Jeff Goldblum, as New Jersey, brings his familiar broken speech patterns. He’s confident with his science, clumsy with just about everything else.
Peter Weller’s confident Buckaroo puts a straight face to everything wacky around him. He has an understated sincerity, especially when he delivers his signature line, “Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”
Two Magical Scenes, +4 Points
Buckaroo Banzai features two of my favorite scenes from any movie.
The first scene is when the performance by the Hong Kong Cavaliers gets interrupted.
At first, Buckaroo and his band are playing a concert until he stops the performance to ask who out in the audience is crying.
The audience parts until we get a spotlight on poor Penny Priddie, who monologues about being broke and lonely.
Buckaroo tries to comfort her. He tells the audience to be kind to her and, slipping over to the piano, serenades her with a rendition of the Skyliners’ Since I Don’t Have You.
Penny mouths the lyrics at first, then raises a pistol to her temple. Just as she pulls the trigger, a server bumps her arm, and she miraculously misses. It’s mistaken for an assassination attempt on Buckaroo, and security hauls her away.
It’s the most unorthodox introduction of a love interest.
Immediately you can infer a connection between Buckaroo and Penny – he can spot her in the crowd – and his kind instincts to drop everything and comfort her, even to the crowd’s objection.
Fun Fact: Peter Weller actually plays the guitar and pocket trumpet. And he sang the sweet arrangement of Since I Don’t Have You (though he had to mime the piano playing).
And the film’s end credits scene is the mother of all credits scenes.
Shot like a music video in front of the Sepulveda Dam in the LA Riverbed and paired with the delightful Buckaroo Banzai theme, there’s a je ne sais quoi factor of 100 out of 100 behind it.
At first we see Buckaroo rappel down a rope and start walking. As the catchy theme plays, he’s soon joined by Perfect Tommy, New Jersey, and eventually the rest of the main cast of heroes. One by one they all fall in line, marching confidently.
The camera pans to details like their belt buckles or shoes moving across the concrete. Where they’re headed, we’ve no idea except adventure.
Like a cast bow at the end of a play, their march finishes in front of “Buckaroo Banzai” written in red letters across a wall behind them.
Pure magic.
So why did this happen?
Apparently the studio chief didn’t want the movie to end with a kiss. And with the film mostly out of budget and into post-production, they improvised this ending.
The film’s score had not been finished, but the composer told the cast to walk to Billy Joel’s hit song Uptown Girl as it was at the same tempo.
All movies should do this. But to my knowledge, it’s only been replicated in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (which is funny because Jeff Goldblum appears in both movies).
The Not-As-Good Things:
Hard to Follow, -2 Points
I felt lost for the first 30 minutes of this movie.
The film could have slowed down and signposted itself more to help the audience with the plot.
But while everything in this movie makes sense, it’s hard to figure out at first.
I’m looking forward to a second watch, where I can enjoy it without the burden of putting the plot pieces together.
Nerd Land , -1 Point
It’s unlikely this movie will appeal to a casual audience.
It’s not a sci-fi movie with mind-blowing revelations and action you can jump into, like The Matrix.
It’s got aliens, but not the thriller or horror kind.
It’s got a swashbuckling hero fit for serials. But he’s a polymath (a term I learned just from reading about this movie), not a sarcastic, whip-cracking archeologist with a heroic theme song.
You can understand why there would be trouble marketing this movie and why it only made half its budget back.
Should I Watch Buckaroo Banzai?
Total Score: 9 Points
With wholly good-natured, left-field sci-fi and Peter Weller reacting to the obscurity like it’s just scientific, Buckaroo Banzai is a classic 80s film.
It’s a nerdy movie, and you’ll have to stick with its plot.
But if you’re in its target market, it will speak to you as few other films can, and you’ll be drawn to it.
I do wish the sequel the movie hints at, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, were made. Porting these characters to another story that might be slightly easier to follow would be a load of fun.
Buckaroo Banzai’s Legacy:
So what is the legacy of Buckaroo Banzai?
Well, the film didn’t do very well at the box office, but with hindsight, you can’t see that as a surprise.
First off, it’s said that the studio didn’t make much of an effort to advertise it to audiences with traditional promotions.
One of the few ways they advertised the movie was to go to Star Trek conventions, show film clips, and hand out free Banzai headbands. There were also some magazine ads, including in Marvel Comics.
However, Wikipedia says Studio Publicist Rosemary Lasalmandra said, “Nobody knew what to do with Buckaroo Banzai. There was no simple way to tell anyone what it was about – I’m not sure anybody knew.”
The film was set for a June 8, 1984 release, but it was pushed back to August 10 – never a good sign.
And the movie also faced box office rivals like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Ghostbusters.
Yikes! You can imagine the potential Banzai audience buying a ticket for one of those other franchises instead, as the other two were established, and Ghostbusters was a phenomenon.
So with suboptimal marketing and heavy competition, Buckaroo Banzai returned about $6.3 million in North America against its $17 million budget – ouch.
I don’t know what its world box office turned out to be or if the movie has ever caught up in terms of DVD and Blu-ray sales or streaming dollars.
I’m a pretty big science-fiction fan, but when I was a teen in the 2000s, my little brother showed me a DVD of the movie and said his pal gave it to him to watch. But taking a look at the box art, with Jeff Goldblum in a cowboy outfit and guitars and space…yeah, I said no thank you.
So I’m just as guilty as anybody else who passed.
But luckily for the movie, plenty of other people took the plunge. The film did find a fanbase once it hit home video. Despite the movie’s early failure, it’s been included in Entertainment Weekly’s Top 50 Cult Movies. And it’s been ranked in The Guardian’s “1,000 films to see before you die.”
Director W.D. Richter told Starlog in June 1986, “It has had the most dramatic reactions of anything I’ve worked on. Some loathe it, and others are willing to die for it.”
That sequel they teased in the end credits, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, was never delivered as a film. And I, like other fans of this movie, thought that sounded intriguing.
But the film had a novelization from creator Earl Mac Rauch in 1984. And then, in 2021, Dark Horse published The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, et al: A Compendium of Evils. So there you go. I’ll have to add that to my reading list.
There were other attempts to continue the Banzai story.
In 1988, Fox Network announced a Buckaroo Banzai TV series but never released it.
In May 2016, Kevin Smith, yes, the Clerks Kevin Smith, said he was adapting the movie for TV through MGM Television. But in November 2016, Smith said he had to walk away from the project because MGM filed a lawsuit against the original creators.
In random trivia, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, a name from the film, had an office on the promenade of Star Trek’s Deep Space Nine.
Director W.D. Richter has an interesting career both before and after Buckaroo Banzai.
He has a writing credit on 12 Hollywood films and directed one more, called Late for Dinner, in addition to Buckaroo Banzai.
Among his works, he wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as well as the screenplay adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Needful Things.
Most notably to me, Richter helped adapt the script for 1986’s John Carpenter classic, Big Trouble in Little China.
So, in some people’s eyes, Little China, Banzai, and Body Snatchers are three science fiction classics.
What’s equally strange in the film’s failure is just how strong the cast of this movie is.
Star Peter Weller didn’t do too bad after this movie flopped. He would go on to play the lead in one of the greatest science-fiction films of all time – Robocop. He’s also appeared in many other films and TV, including Naked Lunch, Leviathan, Mighty Aphrodite, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, Longmire, and so on.
And we’ll be here all day if I get into the incredible careers of John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Clancy Brown, and the rest of the cast. So use the links here to look them up if necessary.
Lastly, as mentioned, Wes Anderson paid homage to the movie with the ending of The Life Aquatic.
So while I can’t prove this outright, I think the style of having a dry delivery of totally absurd comedy, which is present in Anderson’s style, may have been sparked to a degree by something he liked in Banzai.
And I think it’s a fair assumption that other directors have been fans as well.
We know Kevin Smith enjoyed the film, as he tried to create an adaptation.
And I wonder if John Carpenter liked the movie, as he more often writes his own screenplays but chose to use one by Richter for Big Trouble in Little China.
So while the film failed, its style still ended up getting repurposed.
Well, that’s all I got. Thanks so much for reading.
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Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
