Buckaroo Banzai: The VHS TV Edition

This was awesome! It hits all the plot points, in a convenient, travel-sized 1 hour episode. Honestly, it felt exactly like a TV episode. And the commercials were amazing too.

What a fun experiment, 10/10 would recommend!!

If i could turn back time.... if I could find a way... I would get Bionic Bob to go back and actually complete a full Buckaroo Banzai TV series. This edit is a pure joy, from start to finish. It's like a big hug of nostalgia for anyone growing up in the 80's like me - the kind of hug that leaves you wanting to tune in for next week's episode.

Initially, I must say that it took me a few minutes to adjust to the nature of this edit. The degrading of the picture, the inconsistencies in the audio levels... I started to get all critical, with my fanediting brain saying, why is the hiss that's been added a bit too loud, why do the commercials sound loud one minute and then quiet the next. Then, I just relaxed and got totally drawn in - after all, the varying quality here is kind of the point of this VHS style edit.

The great thing here is that it's not overdone. I have seen some edits of this kind try far too hard to make it feel "old", or as if it's been sourced from an old VHS tape that's suddenly been discovered, to the point where it just doesn't work. This is not the case here however. Bob has done an excellent balancing job, and by half way through I genuinely felt like I had been transported back to watching TV back in the 80's. That's the ultimate success of this edit. The advert break transitions work a treat, the choice of adverts made me smile (even though most of them I'm not familiar with, as I'm from the UK and we didn't get all these adverts back in the day) and I particularly loved the NBC indents.

As for making Buckaroo Banazai a TV series? It actually works far better than I thought. The idea of landing us half way through a story, and then have no ending as such... it could be seen as a bit much, but you know what? It's brilliant. Indeed, the concept of this whole edit is pure genius in my eyes. It kinda should not work... but it does. It works beautifully.

Scoring this kind of edit is very difficult... perfect 10's across the board for me, as it's not an edit that is trying to obtain the perfect quality... but when you judge it on what it's setting out to achieve, it does it perfectly. All in all, highly recommended for anyone wanting to take a trip back to watching TV in the 80's.... now, if only I could uncover the VHS tape for the next episode.

This was a very fun edit! I understand it was done as an experiment, but I wish Bob had made 3 or 4 episodes of the full movie and not just part of it... again, I get what he was going for and absolutely achieved! the editing of the commercials is just awesome & reminded me of my childhood... if you are a fan of the movie, def check it out!

Although from the wrong era and continent, seeing this presentation brought me right back to watching programs recorded on VHS twenty-odd years ago. The style of the film is adapted so well into the new format that you would not know that is started out as a widescreen film, in-fact I think the short format helps in a way to make the story more digestible (not the greatest fan of the original). The only issue is that now I wish there were more episodes!

Audio/Video Quality: The audio and video were intentionally degraded for the immersion, but not to the point of things being hard to make out, just enough to convey the style. The audio and video quality is perfect for what it is trying to achieve without going too far.

Visual Editing: Nothing felt out of place, no weird cuts, the cropping looked nice, everything was well done. The look of the movie was consistent with that of the commercials, and the whole presentation was nicely immersive.

Audio Editing: Everything was again nicely edited together, I'm especially fond of the inclusion of a brief line of dialogue from a deleted scene. The commercials were noticeably louder than the rest of the feature, which was intentional as part of the immersion. I wasn't quite fond of this, but there's no sense in taking points away for it, especially now that Bob is talking about releasing a version without this.

Narrative: For the majority of this edit, it just follows the movie without any real big changes to the narrative. The beginning "Last time..." part was very well done and did a great job at conveying everything that occurred before our story picks up. The cliffhanger ending was also handled well. I didn't realize that it was going to end where it did, though I made the mistake of checking how much time was left so I knew there would be some sort of cliffhanger.

Enjoyment: The presentation of it all was fantastic and really enjoyable, some of the commercials were very amusing. Beneath the presentation, as mentioned before there aren't really any big changes to the narrative, so I was a tad bored at parts because I happened to watch the movie again not long before this. It's not the edit's fault, it's not trying to be different in that department, it's just trying to present the film in a new context, and the presentation itself was fantastic, so no reason to take points off.

This edit was really interesting, though I don't necessarily think I'd watch it again anytime soon unless I were to make my own vintage TV edit of something and wanted a refresher on how to do it right. I seriously appreciate all of the effort put into this edit by Bionic Bob.
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who doesn't already like the film, it's not a fanfix obviously, but fellow fans of this film will surely love this interdimensional experiment.