Spaceballs

Mel Brooks has done everything. He made Frankenstein’s monster into a song number (“Young Frankenstein”), really brought the attention of tight-wearing weaklings of fairy tale (“Robin Hood: Men in Tights”), and even showed the West for its extreme political unsuitability (“Blazing Saddles”). It sounded exactly the right choice that he would make his well-deserved satire at the only film genre he has not spoofed at, science fiction, with the hit-and-miss 1987 comedy, “Spaceballs.” A film that gets just as many things right as it does wrong, “Spaceballs” is definitely not Brooks’ greatest work to date, but it has got to be his most famous, thanks to an eccentric cast of comedy actors, an incredible cult following, and most importantly: Merchandising!

As we see in the scrolling introduction similar to “Star Wars,” the planet Druidia is going to be extinct due to the work of the evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and the Spaceballs when they kidnap King Roland’s (Dick Van Patten) daughter Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) and hold her hostage in order to get all of the planet’s clean air. Vespa has run from her wedding to Prince Valium (Jim J. Bullock) with her C-3P0 hybrid, Dot Matrix (Lorene Yarnell but voiced by the late Joan Rivers). Desperate to ask for help to save his daughter, the King asks the help of famous space rouge Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his half-man/half-dog partner Barf (the late John Candy) to travel across space, rescue his daughter and save the planet’s special air supply. This hilarious duo of incompetent protagonists happily accept the mission for the unknown amount of space money, a debt owed to the infamous Pizza the Hut (Dom DeLuise), but they first must find the mysterious Yogurt (Mel Brooks) and learn the secrets behind the powers of The Schwartz before Dark Helmet takes over space.

Jason Zingale said in his review, “The main premise of the film (both its plot and characters) is mostly influenced by George Lucas’s sci-fi trilogy “Star Wars,” but Brooks borrows from the likes of nearly every popular sci-fi franchise, including “Star Trek,” “Aliens,” “Planet of the Apes,” and even the not-so-science-fiction tale “The Wizard of Oz.” Brooks includes a good collection of quality gags throughout, but it’s Moranis’ crowd-pleasing re-creation of Darth Vader that ultimately wins in the film’s internal battle for absolute absurdity. Other notable performances include Bill Pullman’s early work as the Han Solo/Luke Skywalker hero character and John Candy as the hybrid wookie. With enough memorable characters and quotes to validate the film as a bona-fide cult classic, “Spaceballs” is one of the few screwball comedies that everyone must experience at least once.” To paraphrase what Dark Helmet would say, “You’d be an idiot if you didn’t.” That’s right; I edited out what he would actually say because this blog is swear free.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but this is one of my absolute favorite comedies. I love the spoof it did on “Star Wars” at a time when spoof movies were actually done the right way. If you haven’t seen this movie, don’t read this review, go find this movie and watch it because it’s one of those comedies that is an absolute must to watch. You will be missing out on a lot of jokes and memes if you don’t see this right now. There are just so many good jokes and quotes that it would take up so much of this blog if I were to list them right now. That’s why I say you need to watch this to know and laugh while getting all of the references to all these great movies, mainly “Star Wars.”

Now that I have reviewed this great spoof, look out next week when I look at two other great spoofs done by a team of great spoof masters in “Parody Month.”