I remember seeing THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION when I was a kid. I remember liking it and have always had a special place for it even as I've grown fuzzy on the details of what it's actually about. By the time I fired this film up again last week, all I had to go on was a general feeling of goodwill, Jeff Goldblum in a cowboy shirt, and John Lithgow hamming it up. How would the film stand up to adult eyes?
Quite well, I'm happy to report. BUCKAROO BANZAI is that most difficult of creations: whimsy, pure and simple, that avoids being overcome by itself. The film lines up Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, and Clancy Brown on one side and John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya, and Vincent Schiavelli on the other, tosses a Maguffin between them, and then gets silly. It layers sight gags over character gags over situational gags, keeps the villains just villainous enough to serve as foils for the heroes, and generally invites its audience to sit back, grin, tap its feet, and groove along.
I enjoyed the heck out of it, and I can't wait to see it again in another twenty-five years.
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