Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

[ronnierocketago]

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984) - ****

"No matter where you go, there you are."[/i][/size]

Whatever you like it or not, you do have to admire how writer/producer/director W.D. Richter somehow was able to spin BUCKAROO BANZAI onto his own particular vision without ever caring at all that most folks will probably be easily turned off. Of course I could say the same about SOUTHLAND TALES, which like BANZAI has also spawned a small dedicated cultdom, but the difference is that BANZAI at least had a goddamn point behind it. At least I think it did.

BANZAI is a myriad of childhood adventurism influences from comic books, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, juvenile detective novels, saturday morning cartoons, and matinee serials, the sort of thing I'm sure BANZAI investors figured would appeal broadly and be audience friendly (i.e bland). You know, the perfect product for Reagan Decade theatres. Then they saw the final print, and all probably had a collective stroke. Remember how THE FIFTH ELEMENT was funky tongue and cheek with that French take on STAR WARS? Well BANZAI has that campyness, except its sincerely serious about it all, and never ever mocks the material with a wink. Think SPEED RACER, but without the ADD-inducing CGI art direction.

For BANZAI, you take a granted that renaissance man Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is a world-famous....you ready?.....neuorosurgeon, particle physicist, race car driver, rock star, and genuine comic book hero. Hell, he and his entourage of scientists/musicians ("The Hong Kong Cavaliers") apparently publish their own comic books detailing their frequent escapades. That's probably when Weller tests his new invention to drive right through solid matter and confronts (okay, runs over) trapped aliens within that "eight dimension," ole Buckaroo doesn't panic at all. See he and his gang confront such crazy shit on a regular basis, which is why the dude is calm and smooth, and thus why he's a real professional adventurer, not a whiney emo-hero like we get in those SPIDER-MAN movies or whatever. Plus he's Robocop, and you do not fuck with Robocop. Weller's crew includes Clancy Brown, Jeff Goldblum, and a dude just named "Perfect Tommy." These cats know how to roll, even if their fashion bloody murder screams the 1980s.



Nobody is perfect, not even Perfect Tommy.

I think a better metaphor to explain BANZAI is The Clash's SANDINISTA! That underrated album came about after Clash had recorded the two-disc masterpiece album LONDON CALLING, and afterwards decided to baffle everyone by releasing the intimidating lengthy magnum opus three-record(!) SANDINISTA! where they literally performed it seems every possible music genre in existence, and more importantly did it their own way. Like BANZAI, it baffled most people, and split critics right down the middle. Like BANZAI, That album has some great parts, some solid good, some experimental parts that may work or alienate you, some that are just randomly bizarre, and some that just outright suck. You may not dig or even like every facet of SANDINISTA! (or BANZAI), but overall it may come off as an admirable ambitiously creative and charmingly likeable canvas. You can't help but pimp it, or relish in hating it. Consider that I've never once met someone who only sorta liked or sorta hated BANZAI. Never. To quote Richter himself, "Some loathe it and others are willing to die for it"[/i]

In short, a perfect cult movie.

I think what baffles people most with BANZAI is its uncompromising labyrinth of a plot. If most superhero blockbusters insist on producing that all-important "origin" about the ubermensch before getting into the action, BANZAI has a self-assured mythology. There are allusions to many past battles, the Cavaliers having great chemistry as if they've been together for years, and ribbing new recruit Goldblum aka the cowboy Jersey, but nothing is outright explained. This simply is one adventure after hundred others, and before a hundred more. But as to the EIGHT DIMENSION episode itself, it's basically a trash can of every possible junk pulp cliche, and which I assume Richter figured the audience would understand without being spoonfed. I did "get it," but I do understand why people were put-off by the narrative.

It regards how Weller's new invention allows trapped aliens to escape into our world, which they intend to conquer. Their leader is John Lithgow, once a brilliant scientist who gets possessed by one of those creatures from a similar experimental venture decades earlier, and also sports an Italian accent. Maybe, I'm just guessing here. You watch and tell me if I'm right. "Laugh-a while you can, monkey-boy!"



Below that is your obligatory confrontation between the cool hero and the lunatic adversary of the week. Both Lithgow and Weller are obviously having great fun here hamming up the joint.



As required by the storytelling conventions of sure fare, you also get kid sidekicks, alien spaceships, a motorcycle chase, an epic finale assault by the heroes and their tour bus on the enemy fortress, technobabble exposition, and Jamaican E.T.s from the Planet Ten. OK that last one you don't usually get from such stories, but it's good to know that the late Bob Marley could have been a great interplanetary ambassador if he had lived. You also get Weller coming across love interest Ellen Barkin, who's the amnesiac twin sister of his dead wife. Hey we can all relate to that, right? I dig that great scene where Weller interrupt his own big nightclub rock gig because Barkin is crying, and tries to calm her down with this piano ballad that comes out of nowhere, and his bandmates just stand there, absolutely baffled:



See it's that sort of great exclusive off-beat pitch that is greatly appealing about BANZAI for me. BANZAI may seem quite familiar, but this simply isn't another nerd fanboy unsinpired xerox of earlier and better media, but a unique creation as both fond disposable entertainment and a witty overt spoof. I mean maybe the best example is when you have BANZAI during this major intense chase through the tunnels of the Banzai Institute when Goldblum and Brown run into, of all things, a watermelon. They pause briefly during this action, Goldblum calmly asks why it's there, and Brown simply says he'll explain it later. He never does unfortunately, but that's how BANZAI boogies.

A pity that BANZAI died in theatres, and thus we never got our promised sequel in BUCKAROO BANZAI AGAINST THE WORLD CRIME LEAGUE. Like another Richter-scripted film in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, some movies are just so fun and enjoyable, you desire a sequel. Hollywood gives us sequels to almost everything these, except most don't deserve them. The closest we Banzai cadets will ever have is some recent comic books penned by BANZAI scriptwriter Earl Mac Rauch, which I haven't read.

I don't know if you would get into BANZAI's grove or not, and BANZAI doesn't concern itself if you don't for it just continues on its merry way. But just watch the ending credits, which at least are infectiously cool because they'll leave a grin on your face, which I can't say about any moment in SOUTHLAND TALES.

[ronnierocketago]

An interesting factoid....director Wes Anderson apparently is a big BUCKAROO BANZAI fan, and in fact homaged BANZAI's "march" during the end credits similarly for THE LIFE AQUATIC:

[arkadyrenko]

I actually sorta liked or sorta hated BANZAI, in matter of fact.

W.D. Richter wrote STEALTH. That doesn't bode well to the ol' chap, does it?

As for "emo" Spider-Man, Spider-Man was always very dramtic to the point of soap operaish, and that's the very point of the comic and the whole set up of the character. It was on porpose. Stan Lee argued that until spider-Man came along, most comic heros were this perfect people with perfect personalities and little to no personal sisiues of outside problems which would bafffled them as much as their arch-enemies.

Spider-Man is not emo, it was the first hero where the authors actually bothered to put him in a real world setting inbetween him fighting oddities. Every comic story and comic movie made since which has character development and do try to marry the fantastic of the hero with a sort of real world enviroment are all children of Spider-Man. That's not emo.

[ronnierocketago]

Feb 10, 2009 21:31:49 GMT arkadyrenko said:

I actually sorta liked or sorta hated BANZAI, in matter of fact.

What do you mean exactly?

Feb 10, 2009 21:31:49 GMT arkadyrenko said:

W.D. Richter wrote STEALTH. That doesn't bode well to the ol' chap, does it?

And he wrote BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.

As for STEALTH, more like for a Rob Cohen production....geez, what you think happened?

Feb 10, 2009 21:31:49 GMT arkadyrenko said:

As for "emo" Spider-Man, Spider-Man was always very dramtic to the point of soap operaish, and that's the very point of the comic and the whole set up of the character. It was on porpose. Stan Lee argued that until spider-Man came along, most comic heros were this perfect people with perfect personalities and little to no personal sisiues of outside problems which would bafffled them as much as their arch-enemies.

And yet, notice in everyone of them in those finales, his woman is always kidnapped or held hostage or some shit. That's not heroic quite honestly.

Shit, why is it in most such comic book pictures, the hero(es) can't engage in hardcore finale shit just simply because it's the right thing to do?

Feb 10, 2009 21:31:49 GMT arkadyrenko said:

Spider-Man is not emo, it was the first hero where the authors actually bothered to put him in a real world setting inbetween him fighting oddities. Every comic story and comic movie made since which has character development and do try to marry the fantastic of the hero with a sort of real world enviroment are all children of Spider-Man. That's not emo.

Don't confuse the comics with the movies, mate.

Then again, aren't you the one who whenever you defend SPIDER-MAN 3, you always cite: "It's better than a Michael Bay movie at least!"

Shit so was the GET CARTER remake, but its still mediocre-ass.

[arkadyrenko]

"his woman is always kidnapped or held hostage or some shit. That's not heroic quite honestly."

It isn't for the girl, ye,s but it is for the guy, because he will do the hero stuff by rescuing her. I know, it's kinda chauvinistic, but that is not the point.

Many heros do fight the final villainbecause it's the right thing to do. I guess that, at the begining, the damsel in distress thing was more a short of short-hand writing, as in the damsel was a small representation of the biggest issues, she was a metaphor for the evil that the villain could do.

The damsel in distress rescuing became problematic when, from the 80s since, both comic and movie heros were given "personal reasons" to fight evil. So, the damsel in distress became less a McGuffin for the villain's evilness and more a motivator for the hero, which, consequentially, made the heros became this anoying egotistical bitches.

I don't count Mary Jane's predictment sin the spider-Man movies as an example of the later case, but as a throwback to the more innocent ways when damsels were abducted by the villains. It's positive that in that ragard, the Sam Raimi Sipier-Man movies are quite pure in that.

"aren't you the one who whenever you defend SPIDER-MAN 3, you always cite: "It's better than a Michael Bay movie at least!""

I don't need that kind of defense, because SPIDER-MAN 3 is a good movie, unjustly slandered just because it's not as good as the second Spidey movie, and because of the impossible expectations the geeks had with the movie. I do think SM3 has problems and issues, but they are hardly of the extent or as bad as the geeks make it out to be.

To say that SM3 is better to a Michael Bay movie is the same to say that a californian watermellon is better tasty then shit, even if a californian watermellon tastes like water. The point is, the SM3 bashing is out of order and out of hand. No, it's not a great movie. Nor was the first. Both are just good, fine movies with lots of problems which bookends Spidey's cinematic adventure. And with a movie like SM2, of coruse both would look porly in comparison.

Speaking of SM2 and SM3, this brings to me this though: with the huge sucess, both commercially and critic, of THE DARK KNIGHT, i wonder if the next to come Bats 3 movie will get the same shallacking as SM3 got, even if it turns out the movie is pretty good, as much as BATMAN BEGINS?

As for your first question, well, inf act, BUKAROO BANZAI does nothign for me, neither for good or bad. i don't hate it, i don't like it either. I'm pretty neutral about it. Believe it, it's true.

[ronnierocketago]

SPIDER-MAN 3 is a mess, but how geeks blame that whole musical sequence, I don't. I thought it was Raimi being bored with that genre and wanting to funk with the material.

No, my problem is a story that never should have been greenlighted, with several good possible tales clobbered into one messy meh thread, and that whole James Franco storyline fucking chaotic and random as hell.

SM3 was ill-conceived, whatever because SONY mandated Venom no matter, its still mediocre.

[arkadyrenko]

All of SM3 problems can be reduced to one word: VENON. Because of that movie didn't had that useless character in that story, the movie would had flowed nicely. Raimi never liked Venon, and it's hsows in the movei in spades. Sony should had had faith in Raimi's vision (the very dude who was responsible for both Spidey movies being Sony's biggest hits of their years) and let him do his stuff, instead of letting the studio accountants and toy-makers teach Raimi how to make a movie.

VENON fucked up SM3, and that's the truth.

[ronnierocketago]

Feb 11, 2009 18:32:05 GMT arkadyrenko said:

All of SM3 problems can be reduced to one word: VENON. Because of that movie didn't had that useless character in that story, the movie would had flowed nicely. Raimi never liked Venon, and it's hsows in the movei in spades. Sony should had had faith in Raimi's vision (the very dude who was responsible for both Spidey movies being Sony's biggest hits of their years) and let him do his stuff, instead of letting the studio accountants and toy-makers teach Raimi how to make a movie.

VENON fucked up SM3, and that's the truth.

I think you might very well be right, Mr. Renko.