Twenty-five years ago today, in the dark and savage year of 1984, The Adventures of Backaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension debuted (see IMDB). I remember seeing it, if not on opening night certainly shortly thereafter, and recognizing in it that most-rare of science fictional creations: a truly funny story that also worked as sf.

The secret, I would argue, is what one might call The Futurama Effect: Second-order narratives that are aware of the enormous backlist of sfnal tropes and simultaneously both deploy and subvert them for comic effect. Think of how BB plays with Grovers Mills, prototypical mad scientists, bug-eyed monsters, polymaths, cowboys, and Pynchon's Yoyodyne.

One of the failings of genre writing is what feels to me like a fear of leveraging its tropes in full awareness, like a tightrope walker clenched constantly against misstep, rather than acknowledging their power and playing with them openly (I seem to recall Umberto Eco making the same sort of observation about Casablanca, but I read him in 1984, and perhaps I'm confusing him with Dr. Lizardo...)

If you haven't seen Buckaroo Banzai — or seen it recently on DVD with the Jamie Lee Curtis prologue — do yourself a favor and check it out.

We'll explain the watermelon later.

h/t io9 for remembering.