Retrospective Film Review

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) • 40 Years Later — crazy sci-fi cult classic that still alienates or endears

Adventurer, brain surgeon, and rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his crime-fighting team must stop evil alien invaders from the 8th dimension.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is a film so delightfully off-kilter that everything — each scene and every quotable exchange of dialogue — has something strange about it, served up in a way that makes it more interesting than need be. It’s almost impossible to provide a cogent summary of the plot and it’s not easy to define it by genre. There’s no doubt that it’s science fiction but the movie carves out its own subgenre. Among other things, it could also be called an unconventional comedy and a matinee-style action adventure. It uses and abuses a busload of tropes which only serve to highlight its similarities to and differences from other genres. It’s one of very few films that can be called unique.