The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

Along with horror, chick flicks and drama, I’ve always thought there should be a separate genre for silly movies, films that can’t be called “good’ by any stretch of the imagination, but that are such silly fun that they’re a blast to watch.

And at the top of that genre list I’d put The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

This 1984 sci-fi spoof stars Peter Weller as Buckaroo Banzai a brilliant surgeon/scientists/rock star who discovers a way to explore the inner space found between the protons, neutrons and electrons that make up our physical world, the so-called 8th Dimension. His experiments open the door for creatures from that dimension to come to earth and start a war to take over the planet thanks to the help of crazed Italian scientist Dr. Emilio Lizardo (A truly bizarre performance by John Lithgow).

The plot of Buckaroo Banzai is as silly as everything else in the film, so don’t waste too much time trying to follow it. It isn’t worth the effort. Instead, concentrate on the performances from Weller and Lithgow, or try and keep score of all the familiar faces you will see parade by (every from Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) to John Ashton (Beverly Hills Cop).

If all else fails, just feast your eyes on the lovely Ellen Barkin whose performance as Buckaroo’s love interest Penny Pretty is probably something she’d prefer you didn’t watch too closely given the much better roles she did after this movie, but she’s just too hot to ignore.

The film runs out of steam about two-thirds of the way through, just about the time you start to realize they spent more on costumes for Peter Weller than they did on special effects.(Keep an eye out for the alien with hands that look suspiciously like hockey gloves. But by then its inherent silliness has enough momentum to carry you through. Only don’t get your hopes up for the sequel, Buckaroo Versus the Intergalactic Criminals, promoted at the end of the film. This was the real title for a sequel that Sherwood Studios planned to make if this film had been successful.

Unfortunately, it was a box-office bomb, and Sherwood Studios went bankrupt soon after its release.