Word: buckarooing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...feeble attempt must be made to synopsize the film's hallucinogenic plot. In 1938 Orson Welles scared his radio fans with a show about aliens landing in Grovers Mill, N.J. Buckaroo Banzai proposes that the invasion was for real. The aliens were not Martians but "Lectroids" from the distant Planet 10, who took on human form while searching for the technology needed to destroy the earth and launch them back to do intergalactic evil. Now the technology, an Oscillation Overthruster, is just beyond their grasp: in the hands of our hero, who discovered it while traveling through solid rock...
...ferocious battle of wits ensues. On one side: Buckaroo (Peter Weller) and the members of Team Banzai. On the other: Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow), once a brilliant physicist, now the vilest, battiest extraterrestrial in all the genre. Meanwhile, the benevolent rulers of Planet 10 hover above New Jersey in a craft that looks like the Mollusk from Outer Space, dispensing wisdom and even more confusion. Where will it lead? Most likely to nuclear annihilation. Already the President of the U.S. is opening a dread, eyes-only packet that reads DECLARATION OF WAR: THE SHORT FORM...
...plot, though, is only the lid of this Pandora's toy chest. Inside, the alert viewer will find humor, imagination and a little Oriental mysticism. (Buckaroo's slogan, "No matter where you go, there you are," could serve as a fortune-cookie credo for the no-problem '80s.) There is also a passel of sharp performances. The presence of such actors as Christopher Lloyd (Zenned-out on an inner voice that must sound like Daffy Duck's), Ellen Barkin (with her bruised features and street-angel smile) and Jeff Goldblum (heartthrob of the Mensa sorority) clues...
...most viewers could catch the first time around and still be an alltime blockbuster. MTV serves up a Dalicatessen of surreal images, and everybody comes back for seconds. Gremlins goes through more drastic mood changes than Sybil; it has sold more than $100 million worth of tickets this summer. Buckaroo Banzai, then, is simply extending the trend of data overload. Still, its creators, Earl Mac Rauch (New York, New York) and W.D. Richter (who wrote Slither and Brubaker), propel their film with such pace and farfetched style that anyone without Ph.D.s in astrophysics and pop culture is likely...
...film's end the producers promise another episode: Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. Is it possible that this wild bronc ride of a movie can be popular enough to spawn a sequel? Watch the grosses, and the skies. -By Richard Corliss