Sunday 31 July 2011

Review - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984 - Dir. W.D. Richter)


I don't get it. 


This has got cult film written all over it but it just comes out as rubbish. I think it comes down to the humour. Infantile and silly. 'But evlkeith,' you say 'You love infantile and silly humour, for example Bottom and Monty Python.' True, true. But the difference is that the aforementioned programmes are infantile, silly, surreal, full of toilet humour and people hitting each other repeatedly with cricket bats. Science fiction and comedy can work well together: Weird Science, Farscape and Firefly. Buckaroo Banzai is just pathetic.




The film smells so badly of the 80s it grates. The fashions, the music, the haircuts all irritate me immensely for some reason. Don't get me started on the cast. Peter Weller: great as Robocop, a personality bypassed robot, rubbish as Buckaroo Banzai, a supposed pop star with personality seeping out of every orifice. And just by saying 'Buckaroo Banzai' fifty million times as if he's important, doesn't actually make him important. Then you have Goldblum playing the usual Goldblum character, dressed as a red and white cowboy. Hate him with a passion. John Lithgow plays the baddie and hams it up like pork scratchings are going out of fashion. Really irritating. Christopher Lloyd: great in Back to the Future... oh, you get the idea.


On to the positives then: erm... you can sharpen the edge of the DVD and use it as a Death Frisbee? Oh, okay, at a push, there are some likeably quirky alien spaceship special effects.


I was bored all the way through it and I wanted it to finish so badly. I never want to see this again. Ever. I don't even know if I want to search for images to put in the review. There will be people somewhere who absolutely love this. I'm glad they got some pleasure out of it. I got none. (Pity my poor keyboard. Towards the end of this review, I've really been banging the keys in annoyance. I need to review a good film next to give it a break.)
0/10
evlkeith




If you like this you could also try:
Big Trouble in Little China, Starcrash, The Lost Empire (if you really want to be tortured).



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