As a movie, Buckaroo Banzai could perhaps be better, but could also be an awful lot worse. Remember, the decade after Star Wars brought forth rubbish like The Ice Pirates, camp epics that tried to emulate Lucas and fell on their faces. Director Richter animates Rauch's world with energy and commitment, embracing every awkward situation (the discovery of Penny Priddy crying in a cabaret audience) and making sure every cornball dialogue line is delivered as if it were the most serious utterance ever heard in a movie theater. Even the manic Emilio Lizardo is played straight. The wackiness is unified into something we can care about - a consistently earnest tone, the maintenance of which is no mean feat.

Deadpan Peter Weller puts just enough ironic curve on his delivery to have fun with his role without condescendsion; he's also vulnerable enough to be an interesting hero. His Cavaliers are interestingly orchestrated, personalities with varying combinations of the cool and the klunky that allow actors like Pepe Serna and Clancy Brown to be distinctive without reams of 'character color' written into their dialogue. Jeff Goldblum is amusingly green, and Ellen Barkin interestingly waifish, even when striding about in a scarlet cocktail dress.

The villains on view are mostly a pack of clowns, led by the wonderful John Lithgow's Lizardo. A tight bundle of goofy mannerisms and extreme facial expressions, Lizardo is wonderful working with the tightass Christopher Lloyd and sub-moron Red Lectroids Schiavelli and Dan Hedaya.

As icing on the cake, the imaginative special effects include interesting organic spaceships, giant flying seashells that look as if they were grown instead of constructed. A handful of different effects shops that sprang up after Star Wars participated in the wide variety of effects that were needed, and these are scaled nicely to the show without overwhelming it. Some of the effects and special makeup actually barely make the grade, yet seem just perfect.

The only real detriments to Buckaroo Banzai are the action scenes and the settings. Without a budget for large sets, altogether too much of the film takes place in (yawn) derelict factories, with endless games of tag being played in nondescript corridors and hallways. The movie also seems a bit shortchanged for rough stuff, and doesn't pay off on the action promised by all the guns, martial arts and samurai hardware brandished by the Cavaliers. On the other hand, this may be a plus for fans sick of the so-called 'science fiction' movies that are really lame action films.

It's fun watching the oddball characters interact and bounce off one another, and the self-conscious cornball factor is a big plus. Scooter Lindley (Damon Hines) rushes out to tell his father Casper (Bill Henderson) that Buckaroo needs help, and receives a 'Say What?' that usually brings down the house. Obnoxious Perfect Tommy (Lewis Smith) is constantly being put in his place for being such an egoist, or placated with reminders that he is, after all, perfect. When all the Cavaliers function as a working unit, blending their technical expertise towards a common goal, the picture becomes a kind of Utopia for young adult males: coolness, hi-technology, guns, and rock music. You can imagine the Fox executives sweating when screenings were greeted with mostly smiles and chuckles instead of belly laughs. Word of mouth was good but this isn't the kind of crowdpleaser that studios understand, then or now.

MGM's DVD of Buckaroo Banzai presents a fine new transfer of the standard 1984 cut, in 16:9 and letterboxed for the first time on video. There was an early laserdisc that was a collector's treasure even though its squeezed and pan'n scanned image looked terrible. The transfer is so good, some of the special effects shots are shown to have optical dirt printed in, a flaw that could have been cleaned up digitally, one could suppose. This Special Edition has a number of unusual extras that will either thrill fans or frustrate them, depending on what they expect from their special edition DVDs.

The extras address one of the main problems that hurt the show when it was new. At the last minute, extraneous background plotting was removed that would have helped some of the relationships make better sense. Thinking the movie too complicated, they jettisoned a prologue that explained Buckaroo's name and heritage, the genesis of the overthruster, and the relationship between Penny Priddy and Buckaroo's dead wife, who looked just like her. Losing this background info (which was presented in a fairly exciting manner) robbed Buckaroo of a lot of needed depth, while alienating literal-minded viewers who wanted all the plot details to add up to an even number.

The special edition DVD was not scaled big enough to take in the entire production. Also, although reels of star interviews and behind-the-scenes video were shot, none was retained by anyone except director W.D. Richter, who only had VHS tape copies, often with time-code windows.