From what I could gather, Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is a ninja cowboy scientist/rockstar. His friends and colleagues all play in a band (Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers) at night but during the day he does science experiments. One of these experiments included testing out a Jet Car with a oscillation overthruster attached. An oscillation overthruster combined with great speeds allows him to travel through a giant rock pile and into another dimension (or to an alien planet I'm not quite sure) and afterwards he brings back some sort of alien life that was still attached to his car. In order to celebrate this successful experiment, the band plays a show that night.
During the show, which is rocking and everyone is loving it, Buckaroo makes everyone stop playing and dancing and laughing and even talking because he senses someone is crying. When he finds the girl crying he does the obvious thing and shines a spotlight on her exposing her at her most vulnerable moment. The girls name is Peggy ("MY NAME IS PENNY!"). He decides to dedicate a song to her. A very melancholy song. During the song she decides its time to end her life. She pulls out a gun and puts it up to her head but before she can pull the trigger, she is bumped and the gun goes off. People start panicking and she is thrown in jail for attempting to shoot Buckaroo (who I keep wanting to call Bonnaroo -- just saying).
Later he decides to bail her out of jail because she looks just like his ex-wife (or maybe it's his dead wife - like I said I wasn't giving it my full attention). After he bails her out, they have a press conference to talk about his findings from the experiment. But he gets a call from the president (of the United States of course). It turns out to be aliens that ionized (I think that was the term her used) him so now whenever he touches someone he shocks them. This also gives him the power to see alien life form. Turns out there were aliens in the audience. A shooting spree happens but the bad aliens get away.
Buckaroo follows the bad aliens to a swamp land area where two hunters just shot down an alien spacecraft. Inside was a good alien sent to Earth with a message for Bonnaroo (I mean Buckaroo). The message basically tells Buckaroo and his Hong Kong Cavaliers that he has one day to stop the evil aliens otherwise they are going to use Russia to destroy the planet.
I think the movie is actually better if you don't pay 100% attention because every time you come back to the movie your just left wondering what hell is going on and how ridiculous the whole thing is, therefore making it sooooo much fun to watch. Even the names are pretty crazy. I'm pretty sure one of the evil aliens name was John BigBooty (probably spelled differently). The plot was crazy! I could probably watch this movie 3-4 more times and find new jokes that I missed the first time. The outfits even better then the plot. Really feels like a landmark of the 80's. The jokes over the top but work perfectly with the plot, set design, special effects. Plus this is a good bad movie with an awesome cast. Jeff Goldblum, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya, and Vincent Schivelli just to name a few. Honestly, I think John Lithgow is underrated. He was basically playing a crazy Russian Christopher Walken in this movie and I was loving every minute of it. Give this man an Oscar!! I loved the end credits. The only thing that would have made it better is if it was a big dance number, but you know what I can settle for this. And on a final note, this is one of those movies that you can watch sober and laugh at or if you are too pretentious to like bad movies, you can make it a rinking game and let go of your standards and laugh so hard you might pee yourself.
Rating: ****
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