Adventures in Disappointment After the 8th Dimension

 by Theresa Gauthier

Review of Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League by Earl Mac Rouch

Spoiler Alert: This review contains spoilers for both books.

Buckaroo Banzai first entered my consciousness in 1984. I found the book, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension, in a bookstore and started reading it before I’d ever seen the movie. I loved both. A story whose main premise was that the famous (So it famous is—sorry threw that in for the few people who will recognize it and where it came from!) Orson Welles Halloween Broadcast of October 31, 1938 was true and had marked the entry of actual aliens who’ve been living on Earth ever since was too delicious for me to skip!

Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers are a crew of super-intelligent scientists who are also rock stars, have their own comic books, movies, concert tours, fans, super fans (Blue Blaze Irregulars!), and an arch-nemesis in Hanoi Xan, who much as any supervillain in a super-hero movie, is intent on our heroes demise. Any film with Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Christoper Lloyd and Clancy Brown, Yokov Smirnoff, and a Pre-Beaters Billy Vera is well worth a look.

I fell for the premise and I adored the writing of the original novel. I found the style brilliant, and loved how it was written. Both the book and the film end with promises that Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers “…will return in Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League.”

This promise was made in 1984, and I admit that more than once I’d given up on it being kept. My delight when the book was announced was tempered when the date was pushed back—but eventually it was indeed released. I’d only had to wait 37 years!

My delight at the release didn’t last long. 

Reading it, I began to realize an unforgivable flaw: it was unreadable. 

I tried. I really did. I’d read a couple of pages, stop, and start, try again—each time convinced that it would begin to make sense, that the story would begin to unfold and reveal to me the perfection I’d expected.

It’s been a year. I give up. That’s not easy for me to admit. I don’t usually leave a book unfinished, but I just cannot waste another moment on this most disappointing novel.

What is it that turned the world of Buckaroo Banzai so unpalatable? 

So many things but the worst were that it didn’t make a lot of sense, and it somehow managed to be both too like the original and too different.

It resurrected the villains, even though that should have been impossible. It resurrected another character, but I didn’t read enough to be certain. It introduced a slew of characters not even hinted at in the original and left other familiar characters out of the story all together—although, it’s possible they make an appearance past the point where I gave up. Even the pretense of having the book written by one of the Hong Kong Cavaliers was altered as this time, Reno Nevada became The Reno Kid.

I still love the original, and I’ll still keep rewatching the film. If by any chance the long-promised TV show ever gets off the ground, I’d give that a chance, too. What I won’t do, however, is go back and try again to read this disheartening mess.