Although reportedly "dismissed by many critics as 'strange' and 'unintelligible'" at the time of its release, the film received positive reviews from 66% of 44 surveyed critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads, "Sci-fi parodies like these usually struggle to work, but Buckaroo Banzai succeeds through total devotion to its own lunacy." Bill Cosford of The Miami Herald praised it as "an unusual film": "Its comedy springs from that odd combination of self-effacement and self-absorption... [it] is basically a comic strip, relentlessly hip... an adventure in the Buck Rogers mold." Dave Kehr, in the Chicago Reader, wrote, "Richter seems to have invented an elaborate mythology for his hero... but he never bothers to explicate it; the film gives you the mildly annoying sensation of being left out of a not very good private joke". Danny Peary 's 1986 Guide for the Film Fanatic described Buckaroo Banzai as a "scatterbrained, sloppily made science-fiction comedy for the stoned-out generation... a surprising failure when hip audiences were turned off by [the] conceited attempt by filmmakers and actors to show off how hip they were." In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote that Buckaroo Banzai "may well turn out to be a pilot film for other theatrical features, though this one would be hard to top for pure, nutty fun". Richard Corliss, for Time, wrote, "its creators, Earl Mac Rauch and W.D. Richter, propel their film with such pace and farfetched style that anyone without PhDs 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". The New Yorker, film critic Pauline Kael wrote, "I didn't find it hard to accept the uninflected, deadpan tone, and to enjoy Buckaroo Banzai for its inventiveness and the gags that bounce off other adventure movies, other comedies. The picture's sense of fun carried me along".