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2001: A Space Odyssey proved that moviemakers didn't have to tell the whole story to hold their audiences. Star Wars showed that a film could contain more information than most viewers could catch the first time around and still be an alltime blockbuster. MTV serves up a Dalicatessen of surreal images, and everybody comes back for seconds. Gremlins goes through more drastic mood changes than Sybil; it has sold more than $100 million worth of tickets this summer. Buckaroo Banzai, then, is simply extending the trend of data overload. Still, its creators, Earl Mac Rauch (New York, New York) and W.D. Richter (who wrote Slither and Brubaker), propel their film with such pace and farfetched style that anyone without Ph.D.s in astrophysics and pop culture is likely to get lost in the ganglion of story strands. One wonders if the movie is too ambitious, facetious and hip for its own box-office good.
At film's end the producers promise another episode: Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. Is it possible that this wild bronc ride of a movie can be popular enough to spawn a sequel? Watch the grosses, and the skies. —By Richard Corliss