Spaceballs
After having forever pushed the boundaries of good taste and political incorrectness for all time with his Immortal Comedy Masterpiece, Blazing Saddles, it became very clear that Mel Brooks had made a conscious decision to try to rein in his style quite a bit and almost play it safe from that point on with his pedestrian output for the rest of the 70s well into the 80s reflecting that, as only the most occasional joke would be known to play slightly on racial and ethnic lines but rarely beyond anything that was truly offensive. In fact, it wasnât until 1987 that he finally struck gold again with his next much beloved classic (all while considering that his pre Saddles output was always thought of as being very high quality), which took as its spoof genre of choice that of science fiction outer space movies in general and of course George Lucasâ legendary Star Wars trilogy in particular, even going so far as to get Lucasâ personal blessing for the project on the one condition that there be no merchandising blitz stemming from the film itself (a concept that inspired Brooks even further for those whoâve seen the film). Whatâs even more interesting was that prior to Brooksâ effort, Star Wars itself had actually already been spoofed and parodied nearly to death by that point, from low budget short films like Hardware Wars to several SNL sketches to even the main cast of Star Wars themselves subjecting themselves to appearances on The Muppet Show and even the infamous Star Wars Christmas Special, so Brooks knew that if he was going to join the party this late in the game, then he had better come up with something pretty special. And that he actually did in many ways, starting the film with a long, monotonous tracking shot of one of those impossibly large Galactic type destroyers (a slight dig at the theatrics of Kubrickâs 2001 as well), complete with even the forboding music score seeming to become âannoyedâ as well by the overwhelming length of the ship, but a closer look shows that Brooks had slyly done something else as well: the ship actually more accurately resembles an extremely large toy (read: fake) that a child could play with or even use hidden wires to recreate such a shot themselves, setting the tone for the deliberately cheesy miniature model effects for the rest of the film and also forever conceding that New Hope, Empire, and Jedi will always look superior in that particular department. Instead of an Imperial Empire, we are introduced to The Spaceballs, an entire race (and planet) of beings whose one defining feature among them all seems to be that they are all a bunch of moronic assholes, complete with a shady, idiot President (Brooks), a military commander (George Wyner, a long suffering character actor promoted to the big time here) who only seems to have risen in the ranks thanks to excessive ass kissing, and best of all, our diminutive Darth Vader wanna be type villain, a little shit in a ridiculous getup complete with black tie and laughably large black helmet otherwise known as Dark Helmet and played in a brilliant bit of off kilter casting by none other than Rick Moranis, who brings his trademark whiny, nerdy persona to the part (which limited his choice of roles for much of his career) but also injecting it with a dose of extra insecure power lust and evil intentions, even as nearly every scene Moranis appears in ends by showing his Lord Helmet being knocked silly mostly through his own bumbling (or by the cameraâs insistence on crashing into him), thus creating a very memorable comic villain that copies Vaderâs basic look and ominous intentions (Moranisâ take on James Earl Jonesâ menacing vocals whenever his âhelmet is downâ makes for great humorous effect) but little else to successfully give off the feel of an originally hilarious character in the hands of a guy who had so much trouble doing so after being typecast as the goofy loser nerd Louis Tully in Ghostbusters. The Spaceballs target a peaceful little planet called Druidia (where apparently everyone lives in a regal, old style medieval paradise and are ruled by a king played by Dick Van Patten) in order to unlock the shield that surrounds their planet and suck out the fresh air and atmosphere to use it to replenish their own planet where they have (naturally) stupidly used up all of their own. To achieve this end they kidnap Van Pattenâs Princess daughter (Daphne Zuniga, starting her solid character actress career here) and her best friend and droid Dot Matrix (voiced by Joan Rivers who gets handed most of the dialogue that falls flat) in order to force Van Patten to give up the combination code for the airlock (funny how The Balls are perceptive enough to know that these people are so vain that The King will in essence willingly doom his own planet to prevent his sweet daughter from being harmed). But there is hope! Van Patten calls upon the services of a space jockey and âhero for hireâ named Lone Starr (Bill Pullman, proving even back then that he had the chops to play slightly bumbling leading men better than anyone) who is an obvious hybrid of the Luke Skywalker / Han Solo characters, along with his âhalf man half dogâ best friend Barf (who would seem to be a riff on Chewbacca) played by the much missed John Candy, second billed here but whom is nonetheless wasted by being relegated to a sidekick turn acting as the squire to Pullmanâs knight, bringing the viewer smiles mostly by his natural charm and charisma as opposed to anything that the script would have him say or do. And so we get a film that turns out to be so light hearted and fluffy throughout that it actually managed in the years since to not just be a âMel Brooks Filmâ, but also a charmingly goofy kidâs classic on par with Princess Bride and many others (despite one F bomb and some suggestive sexual humor), partially due to some rather juvenile humor and wordplay that could have been written by a 10 year old. Either way, the film does roll along at a brisk pace featuring some likable cameos and bit parts for old pros like Dom DeLuise as the fearsome Pizza The Hutt, Police Academy alumni Michael Winslow as a radar technician who makes sound effects with his mouth (of course), Jm J. Bullock as the obviously gay Prince engaged to be married to Zuniga, co writer Ronny Graham as the kind, old, short tempered minister overseeing the wedding, Brooks doing double duty as Yogurt, mentor to Pullman in the art of âThe Schwartzâ as well as making a mad merchandising blitz over any kind of products that the filmâs name can be attached to, and best of all, John Hurt, of whom just his mere appearance onscreen setting up the gag paying homage to his best known sci fi role is perhaps the most awesome buildup imaginable. But then there are also the moments and gags that are so brilliant in and of themselves with their one of a kind audacity (many of which involve breaking down the so called fourth wall) such as the villains learning of the heroesâ whereabouts by grabbing a VHS copy of Spaceballs The Movie off the shelf(!) and fast forwarding through it to get to the right scene in question, or even better when Dark Helmet and Lone Starr are engaging in their climatic lightsaber duel and Lone Starr moves out of the way of a wild swing by Helmet who winds up taking out one of the film crew members! Itâs moments like these where we finally remember just how Brooks really did invent the anything goes, anything for a laugh style of movie comedy that the ZAZ boys and others merely co-opted into their own methods of deriving humor. And letâs keep in mind that besides Hurtâs memorable cameo, we also get homages to Star Trek and Planet Of The Apes thrown in for no extra charge, officially making this the classiest, best made, best written science fiction spoof in movie history, enhanced wonderfully by a game cast and enough truly funny and hysterical moments to far outweigh the bad. More importantly, it reestablished Brooks as a major comedy player who was now back in the game during the 1980s, even if he was unable to come back around this way and work at this level ever again. But for the very limited, hard to get right field of sci fi comedy, we can confidently state that right here was perfection actually attainedâŚ
9/10