Synopsis of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Who is Dr. Buckaroo Banzai?

Is he a soldier or is he cooler than that?

Is he a physicist or is he he cooler than that?

Is he a neurosurgeon or is he cooler than that?

Is he a  a race car driver or is he cooler than that?

Is he a rock star or is he cooler than that?

He's all of the above and he's cooler than that.

In the first 5 minutes of this movie we are introduced to Jeff Goldblum, for you youngsters he was quite the big deal in 1984.  But he's not Buckaroo.  Buckaroo is Peter Weller because as cool as Jeff Goldblum is Weller is cooler than that.

They reattach a young Eskimo's arm and wire verbal control of the arm to his brain.  But this movie isn't about a brilliant young neurosurgeon.

Then Dr. Banzai goes to the desert to set the land speed record in a jet powered pick up truck.  But this movie is not about a race car driver turned physicist that uses a truck and a mountain range as a practical laboratory for quantum physics.

At the end of the course Buckaroo veers off course and drives through, not over or around or under but through, a mountain.  The movie is about this.  He travels not through the mountain per se but through the 8th dimension, the 4th through 7th being too hum-drum to warrant Buckaroo's time, via his oscillation-overthruster enabled jet powered pick up truck.

After traveling through this mountain and out the other side through a quantum slice of space time explained to be in the space between molecules in our universe Buckaroo comes under the scrutiny of the red Lectroids who have been stuck in our quantum time space since the 1930's.  They want his oscillation-overthruster and they wanna go home.

Led by the terrestrial leader of the red Lectroids Lord John Whorfin who has lived inside the head of Dr. Emilio Lizardo, a contemporary of Dr. Banzai's parents who made it partially into the 8th dimension, headfirst and up to his neck, several decades ago this starts a skirmish to get the overthruster away from Team Banzai, who are also the rock band called The Hong Kong Cavaliers, and mount it on their space ship and fly into a brick wall in a Grover's Mill, New Jersey warehouse and back to the 8th Dimension.

The black Lectroids come to Buckaroo and his team and level the playing field and all hell breaks loose in the Grover's Mill HQ of Yoyodyne.

And you know what?  There are no spoilers in the above synopsis.  The movie is that frikken awesome.

--MCL