Popular reviews

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★ 18

  Here's the quintessential PG cool movie. Peter Weller is a brain surgeon / scientist / race car driver / rockstar / piano playing / bandana wearing badass. Only the 80's could bring us a movie like this. Yet, to me, it feels about 30 years ahead of its time.

  I think every single person involved in this movie smoked some serious drugs. Jeff Goldblum dresses like Howdy Doody. John Lithgow sells crazy. The baddies look like bootleg versions of Admiral Ackbar. Ellen Barkin plays the Princess to Weller's Mario. Vincent Schiavelli looks like an alien already.  Lewis Smith as Perfect Tommy is cool as fuck. Clancy Brown as Rawhide is a badass motherfucker and my favorite character. The crazy thing…

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  Review by merritt k ★★★★ 2

  We need more movies that introduce outlandish original characters with no origin story or anything, just "check out this cool dude who's a rock star and brain surgeon and uh oh here come some aliens!" We also need more movies where the ending credits are just all of the main characters strutting around to some really sick music.

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ½ 7

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  Film #10 of the March Madness 80s Sci-Fi Movie Challenge!
  letterboxd.com/naughty/list/march-madness-80s-sci-fi-movie-challenge/
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  I don't know if I'm the right gender to appreciate this! Hell I don't even know if I'm the right species!

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★★½ 50

  After watching, and enjoying, Galaxy Quest the other night, and thinking that it could gain status as a brain dead dudeflick, suddenly I thought of my ultimate dudeflick, Buckaroo Banzai.

  I first saw it on Pay TV many years ago when I was in my 20’s, shortly after its failed theatrical release, and immediately fell in love. At first, I didn’t quite know why. I’ve never been a comic book or superhero kind of guy, but this film didn’t really fit into those genres. It was something different and unique. Then it hit me .. this is EXACTLY what I used to fantasise about back when I was in elementary school. In fact, my best buddy and I even drew…

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  Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★★ 8

  I've been ionized, but I'm okay now.
  -Buckaroo Banzai

  The film was so ahead of it's time that almost 30 years later we still haven't caught up to it. It's absurdest science-fiction that manages to make no sense and complete sense all at once. The characters utter dialogue that baffles the mind, but it's the kind of nonsense that could only be written by someone with actual talent... or a demented mind.

  The plot is ridiculously fast paced and doesn't stop for a single moment to give you a breather. Within the first 20 minutes of the film, Buckaroo Banzai performs brain surgery, test pilots an experimental rocket car, discovers an alternate dimension, plays a gig with his band (Buckaroo…

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  Review by Ian West ★★★★ 6

  Jersey represent. My dad loves this movie because New Brunswick nj, which is where he’s from. I love it because I worked in new Brunswick nj at Rutgers and got trashed with rando frat house people who I hated but free booze n drugs so... yeah. Imagine the beach bum but Peter Steele strolling into a frat party with a employment pass lol.

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★½ 4

  Possibly the greatest collection of weirdo 1980s actors ever assembled: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Dan Hedeya, Vincent Schiavelli, Lewis Smith, Clancy Brown and, of course, Yakov Smirnoff.

  A space epic founded on Zeno's Paradox: the space between things is infinite, so where ever you go, there you are.

  The New Wave counterpart to Repo Man's punk rock.

  "Why is there a watermelon there?"

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  Review by Joe Lynch ★★★★ 1

  The best weird. A film fueled on pure Pulp Sci-Fi idiosyncrasy. Never again.

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  Review by Fred 🇵🇷 ★★ 16

  Before I say anything else, let me just get this out of the way: yes, I did watch this solely because of Ready Player One. Judge me all you want but that deliriously fun movie put this obscure sci-fi flick on my radar years ago and it's the major reason why I finally took the plunge and watched it. In a twist of fate, despite my fondness for Spielberg's nerdgasm blockbuster, I've finally found something I don't love about it: the fact that it encouraged me to watch The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai...blah blah.

  This myopic mélange of half-baked niche sci-fi nonsense is incomprehensible. Every time you think you have a grasp on what the point of it all is,…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 14

  "We're not in the eighth dimension! We're over New Jersey!"

  The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension feels like a movie written by a 15 year old growing up at the end of the Cold War, an adolescent fantasy of a renaissance man who's a neurosurgeon and a rocket scientist and a rock star all at once, who gets caught up in both his own little blue planet's threats of mutually assured destruction and in a much larger intergalactic inter-dimensional crossfire, a rock & roll super genius who saves the world from both alien invaders and the Kremlin, and yes of course it's silly, that's the point, it's the kind of ego-fueled day dream that a young boy would…

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  Review by Darren ★★★ 1

  "Why is there a watermelon there?"
  "I'll tell you later."

  One of the wackiest science-fiction films of the '80's; and one that you wouldn't think shaped a heap of classic films, like Back to the Future- but that film had a cooler car (DeLorean > Old Ford Pickup Truck).

  Although it was very wacky and at other times amusing, the story was a little confusing and not as I expected.

  But hey, that last scene with the choreographed music video was 100% '80's awesome!

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★½ 1

  "The time has come, Bigbooté. Prepare for my return."