Buckaroo Banzai Against The World Crime League

[STMPD]

...Is A Novel.

No, seriously. I mean, DW IV is supposed to go into Buckaroo Banzai Land, right? Are we... are we aware of the fact that the original screenwriter just put out a nearly 600-page sequel novel? Is there some other thread which has pointed this out?

I know this guy (EM Rauch) has blocked other screen adaptations of Banzai by, like Kevin Smith, but I don't give a damn. I bought a copy for my dad (it's his favorite movie), a copy for me, I'm 70 pages in, and it's funny as hell, overwritten in the style of an 1890's dime novel (which was, I think, Buckaroo's inspiration, a sort of Doc Savage type) to a point.

You guys have to read this.

[Bob Schroeck]

I didn't get past the first line of your post before I put it in my Amazon cart, so... yeah. <grin>

[Bob Schroeck]

It took a while for the budget to permit it, but my copy arrives tomorrow.

[nemonowan]

Oh boy...
Be sure to tell us your opinion on it, but from other reviews I have seen... better moderate your expectations.

[STMPD]

Oh boy...
Be sure to tell us your opinion on it, but from other reviews I have seen... better moderate your expectations.

Well, I finished it.
It is absolutely, utterly bonkers and rambling and stupid and silly and honestly, really really gross. I can see why people would hate it, honestly, it feels an order of magnitude weirder than the OG movie. Too weird, maybe. I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'badly written fanfic' as Boing Boing did, but look, Buckaroo Banzai isn't really a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, just bonkers and rambling and... yeah. So if nothing else, this book is consistent with the movie (I guess John Scalzi liked it?)

I was actually okay with all the gross-out bits and the replacement of the f-bomb with a neutered term, but what frustrated me was that the story finally picked up in the last third of the book and then ended up utterly unresolved. They don't nail Xan, they don't nail the resurrected Whorfin, the Black Lectroids hover ominously over everything, and there's a promise of another book off in the future. Six hundred pages and Rauch couldn't resolve his book.

So... is it good? I'm not sure. It's a wild ride right up until the last forty pages, at which point it becomes clear we aren't going to get the resolution we want and that's just a crying shame. Will I read the doubtlessly-coming-soon sequel? Fuck if I know. Probably, but I won't be happy about it.