The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension came out in 1984, and The Husband swears I saw it back in the '80s. I have no recollection of it at all. Even now, having watched it (again?), it's like I've never seen it before. Now, having watched it (again?), it doesn't surprise me that it didn't stick with me through the years. Peter Weller (Robocop, ST: Enterprise) stars with John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Robert Ito (Star Trek connection), Ronald Lacey (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Clancy Brown (Kurgan in Highlander), Vincent Schiavelli (Star Trek connection) and Dan Hedaya. We watched the theatrical release. It had plenty of special features, including 14! deleted scenes, but we skipped them.

trailer:


The New York Times likes it, closing by calling it "pure, nutty fun." Time Magazine says it's "the very oddest good movie in many a full moon." The Variety review is here. 1000 Misspent Hours says it eventually achieved status as a cult film but that

its initial release was such a cataclysmic failure that it drove the Sherwood production company out of business, instantly scuttling the sequel proudly forecast in the closing credits and creating a thicket of ownership quandaries dense enough to send the VHS tape swiftly out of print and to delay the DVD release for years.

Moria opens with this:

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension is an object lesson in how to create an instant cult film. Buckaroo Banzai fulfills all the requirements of a cult film – it is exceedingly eccentric, it was a commercial failure at the box-office, it instantly received a fan clique – all without it ever being a particularly good film.

2/18/2010: Great Old Movies calls it "a tedious and woeful, career-killing failure virtually devoid of entertainment value" and "virtually unwatchable".