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.
© James Travers 2012
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Mel Brooks film:
Life Stinks (1991)
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.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.