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Buckaroo Banzai used to be my favorite film until…
By One Eyed View | May 19, 2007
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I’d like to consider myself the kind of person who doesn’t live in the past and is always looking toward the next adventure. However, every once in awhile I find myself watching some old movie on some odd channel at some odd time of the day, usually late at night when I can’t sleep after having some weird dream and posting it over at WeDreaming.
With this in mind, I’d like to share an experience I had recently. I ended up watching a great comedy that I loved when I was a kid. It was a film by Mel Brooks called Blazing Saddles and it was even funnier than I remember, most likely because as an adult, I understood many more of the subtle jokes. With this in mind, I jumped online and added a movie to my Netflix list that I absoulutley loved as a kid. It’s a bit more of a rarity than Bazing Saddles and it’s called The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension.
The plot goes something like this as posted on the IMDB…
Buckaroo Banzai is a rock-star/brain-surgeon / comic-book-hero/samurai/ etc who along with his group, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, must stop evil creatures from the 8th dimension (all named John) who are trying to conquer our dimension. He is helped by Penny Pretty, who is a dead ringer for his late wife, and some good extra-dimensional beings who look and talk like they are from Jamaica. Written by Greg Bole {bole@life.bio.sunysb.edu}
Although the plot appears to make this movie a goofy comedy with a more than humorous plot, when this movie arrived I popped it in and made the mistake of talking it up previously to my wife. Boy was I embarassed. Although this movie features a LOT of great actors and actresses,
Peter Weller … Buckaroo Banzai
John Lithgow … Lord John Whorfin/Dr. Emilio Lizardo
Ellen Barkin … Penny Priddy
Jeff Goldblum … New Jersey
Christopher Lloyd … John Bigboote
I have to admit that my memory of it was skewed through the years. It was tough to sit through and in fact, because of my guilt in making my wife sit through the first half hour, I had to turn it off and do something more productive with my time. I was never able to find the time to get back to it, but if you dare and have some free time, feel free to check it out for yourself and post a comment here with your opinon.
View these childhood favorites at Amazon…
Topics: Film, History, Personal |
May 19th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Oh man, I had exactly the same experience. I saw this film in the theatre with my best friend when it first came out and we loved it and laughed so hard. Flash forward at least 20(+?) years and my husband (who had also seen it as a kid) and I decided we should watch it again. It seemed so …. amateur and super-campy. But I still love the concept of it and have a secret dream that the entire cast would re-unite to do a more contemporary sequel. It’ll never happen of course…
May 19th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
According to IMDB, it was released in 1984…23 years ago. Time flies;)
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Hey, maybe we could tie it to the 25th anniversary! It would be so great to see that cast reunited. My favourite quote from BB: No matter where you go….. there you are.
BTW, Thanks very much for the stumble. I haven’t gotten on the stumble wagon yet, but it’s on my ever-lengthening to-do list…