When it comes to cult films, you can’t get much cultier than W.D. Richter’s 1984 sub-hit The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Boldly weird, hugely ambitious, and containing a multitude of characters, Buckaroo Banzai is still, to this day, something of a wink-and-nod insider’s password for anyone who was a fan of oddball movies of the 1980s. Those who love this movie, really love this movie. Indeed, the promised (and never made) sequel Buckaroo Banzai vs. The World Crime League has gone down in cult film lore as perhaps the greatest unmade movie of all time.
And here’s the real kicker: Buckaroo Banzai is not a very good film. Indeed, here at Trolling – a series of articles devoted to staining your most cherished memories with the harsh hammer of nitpicking – we are about to take a good deep look at this beloved 1980s cult hit and poke it full of holes, toppling it, all to realize the real heartbreaking truth of it all: Buckaroo Banzai SUCKS! Let’s take a look into the many reasons why.
I admire the audacity of the film, and one cannot deny that the filmmakers constructed a unique universe. This is the kind of story we’ve never seen done before, and only once since (W.D. Richter wrote the very similar Big Trouble in Little China). Buckaroo Banzai is the kind of film that aches to be a cult hit, so its cult following is appropriate. But it doesn’t take much scrutiny to see Buckaroo Banzai is a confusing, incomplete mess. Its ideas are fun, but as a movie, it doesn’t fall together.
Until next week, let the hate mail flow.
Witney Seibold is an editorialist and critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly Trolling articles here on Crave, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
Buckaroo Banzai SUCKS!
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It's Racist
Buckaroo Banzai himself is half American and half Japanese. He doesn't look at all Japanese. He looks like Peter Weller. This film doesn't seem to take a very positive view of Japanese people, seeing them as exotic “others” and bonkers outsiders with weird customs. That Buckaroo's last name is “Banzai” is a bit offensive (“banzai” was, in 1984, only seen as a Japanese battle cry). Buckaroo never seems to refer to his own Japanese heritage either, except in one scene where he wields a freaking samurai sword. It's hard to look past the “Japanese people are goofy” jokes.
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Buckaroo Banzai is a Crappy Musician
When Buckaroo Banzai plays a a concert, he interrupts his first song because he sees someone crying in the audience. He forces her to admit her woes in front of the entire audience, crying loudly and openly. Buckaroo's response to this is to sing (not very well) a rendition of the ultra-sad song “Since I Don't Have You.” Was this his cure for her sadness? To play a kill-yourself break-up song? And guess what the woman tries to do: she tries to kill herself. Way to read the room, rock star.
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Buckaroo is Bland
He's a neurosurgeon, a rock star, a race car driver, a brilliant physicist, an aide to the president... and a complete snore. Weller does his best to play it “cool,” but “cool” can only go so far. Buckaroo is so unflappable, you begin to wonder if he has any emotions at all. He reacts to everything with a distant, detached hipster calm. I don't need to see this guy flip out or anything, but it would be nice to see him display an emotion beyond “huh.”
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Why Does Penny Fall for Buckaroo?
Penny Priddy is a smart and sassy lass, mostly because she's played by Ellen Barkin. Buckaroo is drawn to her because she looks almost exactly like his dead wife (and are they twins? I don't recall). But Buckaroo sort of abducts her, she agrees to join his retinue for some reason, and eventually reveals a tender side of herself. Did they have a romantic moment besides the attempted suicide? And once she found out that this guy was once dating her twin sister, wouldn't she freak out? Have a reaction of any kind? No. She loves him for the most basic reason of all: plot mechanics.
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The Hong Kong Cavaliers Are a Crappy Band
We don't hear much of their music, but the Hong Kong Cavaliers – supposedly one of the most successful music acts on the planet – sound like any other crappy bard band. They sound like a sub-par, Blueshammer-esque, Huey Lewis knockoff. This is not a band I want to dance to. This is a band I want to flee.
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The Hong Kong Cavaliers Have No Personality
We're told that the Hong Kong Cavaliers are interesting people... I think. I can't really tell. Since the characters are never really introduced in any sort of meaningful way, and we're not given too much more about their lives other than their names and their clothes, they seem to vanish into the background really quickly. They move as a cloud, occupying the space behind the villains the way the set does. I can't remember anything significant they add the the story. Only Jeff Goldblum offers anything unique, and he doesn't have much by way of competition.
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It's Incoherent
Seriously, this film is impossible to follow. Not that I want every film to follow the beats of Screenplay 101, but basic story structure, a sense of pacing, and a general narrative thrust would have helped. This film is a mess from start to finish, hastily introducing characters, never establishing much of the film's universe, and refusing to divulge any plot beat with anything approaching a moment's clarity. I had to watch this film numerous times before I felt like I understood what was going on. The screenwriter clearly had a lot on his mind, but he failed to walk us through on the screen.
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It Feels Incomplete
To expand upon the previous thought, this movie feels incomplete. I feel like the filmmakers had a solid handle on the Buckaroo Banzai mythology, but not storytelling. It's like listening to a 13-year-old describe his favorite comic book; he knows all the terminology, but forgets to put anything in context for the uninitiated. As such, Buckaroo Banzai, for all its appealing weirdness, feels like the highlights of a much longer film. Only the parts we're missing are the parts with all the exposition and character work.
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It's Never Truly Funny
For a film about a rock star neurosurgeon fighting off Red Lectroids from the 8th dimension, Buckaroo Banzai is strangely inert. This is the type of story that requires a madcap pace, a slapstick energy, and a ballsy form of Pythonesque chaos. But it's not. Since the story is so incoherent, and the characters so vague, the jokes never build up to a head of steam. The punchlines never land. The most one can say is that the film offers a few limp chuckles. But there is not one single big laugh in the entire film.
