Spaceballs (1987)
Directed by Mel Brooks

Film Review

By the late 1980s, the actor-director Mel Brooks was fast running out of things to parody.  Having sent up the musical comedy in The Producers (1968), the western in Blazing Saddles (1974), the classic horror film in Young Frankenstein (1974), the silent movie in Silent Movie (1976) and the suspense thriller in High Anxiety (1977), you'd have thought Brooks would have had his fill of gratuitous lampoonery.  Oh, no - not when the most send-up-able film franchise of them all was just sitting there, waiting to be blown out of the skies by Brooks' deadly mirth rays.  Next on Mel Brooks' hit list was Star Wars, not just the film and its two sequels, but the entire mass-market exploitation machine surrounding it.  This time Brooks had a serious and justifiable grievance to nurse, and there's nothing more ferocious than a compulsive Micky-taker with a grievance.

Spaceballs is the cruellest Mel Brooks parody of them all.  Not content with poking fun at the superficiality of the sci-fi genre in its glitzy effects-dominated 1980s manifestation, it goes after the cynical merchandising phenomenon which it spawned, with the casual restraint of a half-starved Velociraptor scenting blood for the first time in a month.  Brooks' evident lack of personal interest in science-fiction allows him to be much more vicious in his lampoonery than on his previous films, which betray a degree of affection for their subject.  Whilst this may give the satire and mimicry a sharper edge, it undermines the film's integrity, as the end result lacks the depth and sophistication that we find in, say, Young Frankenstein.  Spaceballs is film parody at its crudest and most superficial, but that doesn't mean it isn't funny.  If Star Wars exists, it exists to be parodied to death (okay, it also exists to make George Lucas a very rich man, but that's a given).  Mel Brooks could not have asked for a richer seam of gags to plunder, and plunder he does, like the born plunderer he is.

George Lucas's familiar characters are all too easily transformed into two-dimensional comedy cut-outs (not too difficult a task given that this is how they started out), exuberantly brought to life by one of the best ensemble casts of any Mel Brooks film.  The superb John Candy almost steals the film as the half-man, half-dog Barf, challenged only by Rick Moranis, who has more fun than is good for him as the psychotically evil, coffee-drinking fiend Dark Helmet.  Bill Pullman makes a more interesting Harrison Ford than Harrison Ford does, although it's not clear whether he is supposed to be Han Solo, Indiana Jones or the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.  Daphne Zuniga may not have Carrie Fisher's quaint uppercrust bitchiness but she is just as convincing as the alien princess suffering from an inflated sense of her own importance.  Mel Brooks couldn't resist joining the ranks of the totally evil (coffee-drinking) bad guys, presumably so he could milk the best Star Trek gag in recorded history (human and Vulcan).

Given that Spaceballs is primarily an all-out rebel attack on Star Wars and all things Star Wars-related, the references to other sci-fi films of the past few decades appear somewhat gratuitous, an easy way to crank a few more laughs out of the spluttering comedy engine.  The Planet of the Apes gag fails only because you can see it come from a mile off, and the same would apply for the allusion to Alien were it not for John Hurt's "Oh, no.  Not again" line and the totally deranged alien song-and-dance number that follows (I am not making this up).   Likewise, the film's attempts to break the fourth wall are pretty hit and miss, and mostly too weird for the jokes to register on a first viewing.  Fortunately, amidst all the misfires and general anarchic lunacy there are plenty of wholesome gags which hit their mark first time round, although you have to have seen the original Star Wars films at least three times to catch all of them.  Some of the jokes may be off the scale as far as toe-curling cringe-worthiness is concerned (the radar jam and Pizza The Hutt gags are the worst offenders and merit a mandatory life sentence on the nearest penal planet), but most have enough belt-busting firepower to wipe out a small army of imperial stormtroopers.  The film is worth watching for the (below-the-belt) light-sabre gag alone.  Lone Starr: "I wonder, will we ever see each other again?"  Yogurt: "Who knows? God willing, we'll all meet again in Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money."  There's the Star Wars greed, I mean creed, in a nutshell.  May the farce be with you.

Film Synopsis

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, the inhabitants of the planet Spaceball have poisoned their atmosphere and plan to steal all of the air from the nearby world of Druidia.  But Druidia is protected by an energy shield, which can only be breached with a secret five-digit combination.   To force the king of Druidia to give him the combination, the Spaceball President Skroob intends to kidnap the Druidian princess Vespa as she flees from an arranged wedding with her faithful robot Dot Matrix.  Skroob's number one henchman, the fearsome Dark Helmet, botches the operation and the princess ends up being rescued by the galactic mercenary Lone Starr and his half-man, half-dog sidekick Barf.  The latter have been promised a handsome reward if they return Vespa to Druidia, but before they can fulfil their mission they crashland on the desert Moon of Vega.  Here, after a long and pointless argument about a hair dryer, they encounter Yogurt, a reclusive mystic who is tasked with overseeing all the merchandising of Spaceball The Movie - a massive undertaking.  Yogurt introduces Lone Starr to the power of the Schwartz, a mysterious something-or-other which he will need if he is to defeat Dark Helmet and return Vespa to Druidia, in time for the video release of the movie.