Day 144 - 5/24/09 - Movie 144
BEFORE: I have a strange vendetta against this film - I've never watched it, but I read the comic-book adaptation when I was a teen, and I found it so weird and so hard to understand, I never got around to seeing the actual film. So I want to find out if it's as inaccessible as I think, then I can cross it off my list and never speak of it again.
THE PLOT: Buckaroo Banzai has perfected the oscillation overthruster, which allows him to travel through solid matter by using the eighth dimension. The Red Lectroids from Planet 10 are after this device for their own evil ends, and it's up to Buckaroo and his band and crime-fighting team The Hong Kong Cavaliers to stop them.
AFTER: Nope, it's as bad as I thought. The storyline is ridiculous, even by sci-fi standards. (Can a movie make negative sense?) This film should appear on the list of the worst films ever made.
The point I want to stress, though, is that it's impossible to MAKE the public like a movie, or a TV, or a recording artist (as the producers of American Idol recently found out...). All you can do is make the best movie, or TV show, or CD you can, and hope for the best.
They tried way too hard to make this Buckaroo Banzai character cool, and it just doesn't work that way. The best sci-fi characters are very simple, even in complex stories. Han Solo is a rogue smuggler, Mr. Spock is a logical science officer. But a brain surgeon/rock star/stunt driver/experimental physicist who can see disguised aliens? You lost me already...
Weird coincidence - this movie makes an internal reference to my last movie "The War of the Worlds", or at least to the 1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast of that story.
RATING: 1 out of 10 Johns
That's it for the "Alien Invasion" films - since I'm not watching "Battlefield Earth" again...I hope our future alien overlords will feel that I gave them a fair judgment, and all I ask is that they offer me the same.
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I think you missed the point on this movie, it was more of a comedy than a science fiction film. Kind of a campy thing. A friend of mine loves this film. As for me, I am not going to run out and buy the DVD, but I don't have any animosity for it.
ReplyDeleteI think they were just trying to make the most ridiculous and over the top character possible, by throwing together every conceivable admired profession.
Also, I have always have respect for John Lithgow, and am I still know from time to time to shout "monkey boy" at people.
I do usually like Lithgow, but found nothing redeeming about the Dr. Lizardo character here - too one-note and too excessive, like the whole movie.
ReplyDeleteI will say that most movies would feature either Lithgow OR Christopher Lloyd as the "crazy villain", but this movie has both.
It doesn't seem like they were aiming for ridiculous - it seems to me like that was the end result, after swinging for serious sci-fi and missing.