While his dimension-hopping rocket car is being prepared for its maiden voyage, Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is busy performing emergency brain surgery at the request of a colleague, Dr. Sidney Zweibel (Jeff Goldblum). Having successfully completed the surgery, he flies to the desert and arrives only moments before the count down finishes for his rocket car. Woosh! He breaks the sound barrier and then - thanks to the "oscillation overthruster" - he drives through a mountain, thus visiting the 8th dimension. When he returns to the desert, he has a brain-like alien life form attached to the undercarriage. Hmm. The last man to travel to the 8th dimension - Doctor Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) - returned utterly insane. The very day that Banzai succeeded in breeching the 8th dimension, Lizardo escaped from the asylum; this is no coincidence. Lizardo was possessed by John Whorfin - a Hitler-like figure from Planet 10 who had been banished to the 8th dimension. If Whorfin can get his hands on Banzai's oscillation overthruster, he will be able to release his followers from the 8th dimension and reconquer Planet 10.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension has a comic book feel to it and also has a vibe of not being the first film. Buckaroo has a band of allies, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, who get only the barest of introductions. It's kind of like Ant-Man showing up in Captain America: Civil War; we all remember him from Ant-Man so he doesn't need a backstory. There is a lot of that in this movie, from the Blue Blazer Irregulars to the unexplained watermelon. There is even the oddity that Penny (Ellen Barkin) is the long lost twin of Buckaroo's deceased wife, a weird way of bringing back the same actress for the love interest even though she was killed off. All of this was fully explained in the last film and is included here as something of an Easter Egg. Except there was no last film.
The movie has a lot of oddball features. Every alien is named John. Surnames vary wildly and are often silly: Bigboote (pronounced Big Booty or Big Boo Tay), Small Berries, Yaya. In addition to being a neurosurgeon and particle physicist, Buckaroo is also a rockstar and has a comic book series detailing his adventures. His entourage all go by nicknames like Rawhide (Clancy Brown), Reno Nevada (Pepe Serna), Perfect Tommy (Lewis Smith), and New Jersey (Goldblum). It is never explained why? New Jersey has only just been recruited to the Cavaliers so we see him transition from Dr. Sidney Zweibel to New Jersey. When asking him to join the crew, Buckaroo wanted to know if he could sing. You need to be a member of the band. Very quirky. Buckaroo Banzai is a character who needs an origin story, something along the lines of Batman Begins.
John Lithgow is over the top, which is par for the course. I've generally found him to be an overactor in the William Shatner vein of acting. His wacky Italian accent, constant bluster, and random misquotes make Lizardo an unstable villain who is more likely to defeat himself than require a hyper-competent adversary like Banzai. He is more comically demented bumpkin than evil mad scientist. Lithgow is at his best in serious roles (e.g. The Crown, Interstellar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes). It may be he has mellowed with age.
An oddball movie that is unfocused but still fun.
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