![]() What saves the production is a collection of performances that are either deadly earnest (Weller, Brown) or histrionic in a way that elevates the material into the realm of high camp (Lithgow). ![]() Note the number of times the film features an extra calling out "It's Buckaroo Banzai!" or clutching a copy of the "Buckaroo Banzai" comic book: it is on the one hand a desperately flippant ploy to create a cult of personality whole cloth, and on the other a means by which to express the studied artificiality of a decade.Īdventures is not a conventionally successful film: its pacing lags, its narrative is confused and crippled by sloppy edits, and though its self-consciousness might be interpreted as satire, too often it just plays as unpleasantly glib. In its focus on technology and personal achievement (to the extent of naming one character "Perfect Tommy"), Adventures also works as a critique on the rise of a pastel-coloured consumer dystopia. It comes as little surprise in retrospect that director Richter is responsible for the screenplay that became Philip Kaufman's excellent 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the naming of all its villains "John" and designating them as "red," the film also speaks tangentially to both the egalitarian ideal of Communism and the perception in the United States of Russians as philosophically interchangeable (and perhaps indistinguishable in appellation). Buckaroo springs into action along with his Hong Kong Cavaliers (Jeff Goldblum, Pepe Serna, Clancy Brown, Lewis Smith) to rescue the lady fair, save the Earth, and sing soulful ballads to suicidal groupies.īeginning with Buckaroo's mixed parentage and proceeding through the arrival of good "black" aliens ("Lectroids") that resemble Rastafarians and have as their first Earth contact a pair of redneck poachers, Adventures shows itself to be unusually sensitive-particularly for an Eighties film-to racial issues. While attempting to pinch the doodad, they also abduct Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), Buckaroo's dead wife's identical twin. After a successful trial run of the device comes to the attention of mad Lord Whorfin (John Lithgow), the villain attaches his tongue to electrodes, escapes from his mental ward while uttering a few classic bon mots ("Laugh while you can, monkey boy!"), and joins up with a team of evil aliens (each named "John" and played by Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, and Dan Hedaya) intent on stealing the Overthruster so that they might rescue comrades trapped in the 8 th Dimension. What I'm trying to say is that the film is holding my brain hostage, and I would like it back.īuckaroo (Peter Weller) is a rock star, physicist, comic-book superhero, brain surgeon, cult figure, and Eastern aesthete-the product of an interracial union between two brilliant scientists and the discoverer of the Oscillation Overthruster (shades of Back to the Future), which facilitates the travel between ours and the 8th Dimension. ![]() ![]() Adventures reveals itself as a commentary on racism, an exploration of Communism in the Reagan era, a surprisingly influential genre piece, and a sly statement on early-Eighties excess and malaise. That moment of clarity occurs somewhere in the middle of the fourth viewing, and while I can't necessarily guarantee that the trial is worth it for everyone, it was for me. Richter's film, its Gordian plot begins to unravel, its tangled web unweaves, and it becomes clear that the most disturbing thing about this legendarily convoluted camp masterpiece is that it makes perfect sense. Once you're drawn into the deadly serious heart askew of W.D. Starring Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblumīy Walter Chaw It isn't so much that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8 th Dimension (henceforth Adventures) is hard to follow, it's that it's hard to assimilate.
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