Rating: 
Summary: If you like Terry Gilliam's films, this may appeal to you!
Review: If you love absurdist humor like the films Terry Gilliam dishes out (Brazil, Adventures of Baron von Munchausen, Time Bandits) you will probably laugh your hindquarters off at Buckaroo Banzai.The durable John Lithgow delivers a memorable performance as Dr. Lizardo, renegade developer of a transporter to take you to the nth dimension inside solid matter. The device is poorly designed as one of the film's characters points out (you need to operate certain levers with your toes.) He lives in a mental hospital; when his wild research starts to suck down incredible amounts of electric power, the hospital reacts by taking away his television while ignoring the maze of equipment in his room. The other baddies, the Lectroids, invade the earth via a false-front company Yoyodyne, and each alien is named John (as in John Yaya, John Smallberries, John Big Booty --pronounced Boo-TAY, thank you very much.) It takes the authorities quite a long time to figure out all is not kosher at Yoyodyne. Peter Weller (of Robocop fame) delivers a deadpan, funny performance as Buckaroo, brain surgeon, particle physicist, rock star and all-around good guy and hero. The cast is superb (including Ellen Barkin) and the lines fast and funny. This film doesn't make a lot of coherent sense, so it missed as a general box office hit, but Buckaroo Banzai has a cult following that has kept it in the top repeat video sales for many a year. If you love sci-fi and weirdly funny stuff, this is a film you will not want to miss.
Rating: 
Summary: Buckaroo Banzai
Review: Buckaroo Banzai is Tom Swift/Johnny Quest if they grew up in the home of Salvador Dali. It's flawed on a lot of levels, but it's so darn much fun you can't help but enjoy it for what it is. It would have done better if it had taken a couple of seconds to explain what the heck was going on with Lizardo, etc. I also wish it had left in the original beginning with Jamie Lee Curtis as a young Buckaroo's mom where we see his Dad and learn what truly motivates this character that is sprung to us 'hell bent for leather' with technology, jetcars and a rock band. But hey, it's still way cool in a gabba, gabba, hey sorta way !
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Summary: the best bad guys ever!
Review: i don't know about these blue blazer regulars. me, i vote with the red lectoids every time. from the first frame of dr emilio lizardo/lord john worfin, i was hooked. john lithgrow (who really IS a red lectoid) rules!!!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Sci-Fi Parody
Review: Buckarroo is a surgeon/rock star/scientist/test pilot, one more category than in many Heinlien and E.E. Doc Smith books. John Lithgow is the best movie alien. I'm still finding new connections, puns and parodies. The music is great. It works up to a final theme in the end with the cast striding down the L.A. River bed.
Rating:
Summary: Where are the heroes? Right here, baby.
Review: Few movies have the campy, American-flag waving, savin'-the-day braggadoccio that this one does, and even fewer do it with such intelligence. "The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai" is a brief glimpse into a larger world of off-the-beaten path heroes, with more renaissance men than you can shake a stick at. Don't let the "cult film" status scare you away. You just have to watch and listen closely to Buckaroo and his pals... this movie is like being let in on a huge inside joke. It's true, some people "get" this movie, and some people don't. But to like this movie is to love it. See it once and ponder it, then see it again and really get attached. With so few true-blue heroes in the movies anymore, it's nice to see one so true, and so unapologetic about getting the job done and saving the world. Saddle up, and expect the unexpected.
Rating:
Summary: Wild, Wacky and too camp for words!
Review: Good-looking people populate this fast paced SCI-FI farce. The fashions are still relevant 16 years later. I loved this movie when I first saw in Honolulu in 1984. Hope you enjoy this as much as my wife and I did As a Systems Engineer working for national intelligence agencies and now a defense contractor I loved the lampooning of our industry. I swear I work for YoYodyne! I viewed with interest the movie's portrayal of the cutting edge computer systems of the day that were all text-based screens. Indeed we have come a long way with Motif, x-Windows and (dare I say it/) MS NT. Regards, jd
Rating:
Summary: "Laugh Whlie You Can, Monkey Boy!"
Review: The main reason I love this movie is the amazing performance by John Lithgow as Dr. Emilio Lizardo, aka Lord John Whorfin. His Nosferatu-like pallor, his rotting teeth and wild eyes, his Einstein-like scattered hair; the astounding accent and slavishly-imitating-Mussolini mannner; the cheesy b-movie-villain dialogue delivered with such gusto; it's all so wonderful. Lithgow is one of our greatest clowns--he's up there with Nathan Lane and Darrell Hammond. I endured much silliness watching "3rd Rock from the Sun" just to see what he would come up with next. An undervalued national trasure (he's also a great dramatic actor too.)
Rating:
Summary: God This Is Strange!
Review: Buckaroo Banzai, the product of a Japanese father and American mother, (I guess that explains the name) is a brilliant scientist, philanthropist, adventurer and rock star who, with his staff of oddly nicknamed sidekicks, must save the world, (again) this time from invaders from space. It seems Orson Wells' War of the Worlds broadcast wasn't a hoax after all...I have just one question: Is somebody ever going to explain about that watermelon?
Rating:
Summary: Better than nothing
Review: As a devoted Buckaroo Banzai fan for the last 15 years, I was disappointed that this "new" video release was taken from an old, beat-up print. The sound is ho-hum as well. One of my all-time favorite movies, in all its threadbare glory... It's too bad all the rumors about a well-restored DVD were wrong. Given that this is the only release of this film available, I give it 4 stars. But it really is a sad, sad effort at a re-release.
Rating:
Summary: OK . . . this humor is of the absurdity humor.
Review: To begin, the first time I saw this movie, at age thirteen, I didn't get it. I got lost at the part where Lithgow (Dr. Lizardo) attaches the electrode to his tongue, then cuts to a flashback. I thought that the electricity had done something to him . . . I was just lost. Then I came back for the end credits . . . Well, this movie became a sci-fi "Ishtar" for me, although "Battlefield Earth" seems to have become the new sci-fi "Ishtar." Well, last year for reasons I have forgotten I was surfing the BB fan pages, and they mentioned they were re releasing the film. Later that night, a friend of mine started talking about the movie. Odd! So I bough the movie on a whim. I saw it with a fellow sci-fi afficionado, and boy were we surprised! It was like watching another movie. I got the humor, which was absurd humor. Like trying to figure our British or Jewish humor, absurd humor requires some practice. It is an acquired taste. GOOD: Where can you see John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, and the subway guy from "Ghost" all in one movie? This is it. Absolutely impossible to do a sequel! Not enough money to pay all of these people. Plus, this is a tongue-in-cheek "sci-fi comedy cult" film. Weird mishmash! BAD: From what I read on the fan pages on the web, this film was rather butchered in the editing process. Knowing how things go on the Internet, I am inclined to belive this. It was that weird transition to a flashback that lost me the first time around. Also, if you don't like absurd humor, you will not like this movie. Another difficulty for me was the costuming. In some scenes, Lloyd would appear as a human, then appear with a weird mask on. When I re-saw the film, I realized that when we say the masks it was because Buckaroo had been translated to see the aliens. If you don't realize this, the film become trans-absurd. ABSURD: Probably the watermelon in the steel press. Plus the "Sined, Seeled, Delivered" sequence at the beginning. CULT: One again, according to the fan pages, the novelization of the film is even more complex, with Dr Hanoi Xan, Dr. Masado Banzai's rival, who was masterminding the Lectriods. Complex! It seems that BB is a cinematic equivalent of the Beach Boy's "SMiLE" album--edited and hacked beyond recognition.
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