I found myself watching the first few minutes of “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension” on UPN just now, before heading out to the Celebration grounds. I don’t know why; I have it on DVD and can watch it any time I choose.
Anyway, some moron at UPN decided that the movie needed introductory narration to explain a couple of plot points. Now, I realize that “Buckaroo Banzai” is a somewhat esoteric movie and that some people have trouble figuring out exactly what’s going on in the beginning. I don’t necessarily approve of tinkering with the movie to explain things, but I understand why someone would want to do so.
No, my problem is not with the tinkering per se, but with the way the tinkering was done. The introductory narration was delivered, in part, at the same time as the introductory crawl that appeared with the movie in theatres. So you have an announcer giving you one explanation about who Buckaroo is and what is going on while another, entirely different explanation is scrolling up the screen. Then, for the very last sentence, the announcer and the printed crawl synch up.
This is supposed to clear things up? You’d have to be a member of Team Banzai to be able to read one synopsis while listening to another synopsis at the same time.
It’s one of the single most boneheaded cases of network editing I’ve ever seen on a motion picture.
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