Spaceballs

Now I'm not a huge fan of Mel Brooks. Sure I enjoy some of the movies he's directed like The Producers and Blazing Saddles. But when people ask me who are the greatest comedic minds, Mel Brooks doesn't come to mind... ever.

Now, this review is going to be pretty short because Spaceballs is a comedy. In fact its a satire. Or a "satire". There's only so much I can say because comedy is mostly subjective. I may find it really stupid but you may find it hilarious. I can't tell you its bad, all I can do is give my opinion based on the story, how it satirizes the original source, and how the actors deliver their comedy.

So unless you're an idiot, you can probably guess that Spaceballs is a parody of Star Wars. And I use that term lightly because... its not really a parody at all. Yeah its set in a science fiction world and the characters are "similar" to Han Solo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, C3PO, Darth Vader, Yoda... and that's about it.

In many ways, it reminds me of a really high budget porn parody of course without the porn.

The story follows Captain Lone Starr (played by Bill Pullman) and his partner, a Mog (half dog half man) named Barf (played by John Candy). Why is his name Barf? ... I don't know.

Anyway, they're... smugglers? Random ass guys? Who are in debt to Pizza the Hut... (ha... ha... ha) So they need a lot of money.

In the meantime, planet Spaceballs (why is it called planet Spaceballs? I don't know) has a deficiency of air so they want to steal it from a planet called Druidia.

On Druidia, Princess Vespa is being forced to marry a Prince... who yawns a lot and is sleepy. Why? I don't know. So the Spaceballs want to kidnap the Princesss in order to force the king to give them their air.

Now I'm not going to go into full length about the logic of this movie because again, its a comedy. But I can discuss the subject in which its suppose to be parodying but did a horrible job doing.

Making fun of Star Wars is not hard.

I know I'm putting Family Guy on the same plane as Mel Brooks but considering the shit I just witnessed, Family Guy parodys Star Wars a lot better.

What about Robot Chicken? Its pointing out the elements we don't think about when our suspension of disbelief is on when we're watching a movie like Star Wars. Parody is often used as a way to point out the things that just don't make sense if we really think about it.

The only time I think I've seen Mel Brooks really point out the flaws in a movie similarly to how Robot Chick and Family Guy does it is in Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

That movie was suppose to be a parody of the Kevin Costner Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Now I don't remember a lot of the movie and I don't intend to watch it and do a review but one part I do remember is the fact that Kevin Costner said he didn't have time to learn a British accent. So he did the entire movie with an American accent.

See that's funny. Its breaking the fourth wall in the right way and at the right time. Spaceballs never does this correctly.

 I guess I'll just discuss the characters and how I feel about their performances.

Bill Pullman and John Candy play the parody of Han Solo and Chewbacca really only in appearance. Bill Pullman isn't funny and neither is John Candy. They both look like they're phoning this shit in. I don't remember Bill Pullman being in any other comedy where he's suppose to be funny... on that note when was the last time Bill Pullman was in anything.

John Candy was a very funny actor. But he doesn't do anything in this movie! Nothing! He just stands there and looks stupid.

The Princess is played by Daphne Zuniga... I think there's a reason we haven't seen her in anything important since this movie.

The rest of the important cast are the bad guys. You have Mel Brooks playing President Scroob (Ha, Ha, Scrotum joke, never seen one of those before Mel) and Rick Moranis playing Dark Helmet. (Get it... like Darth Vader?) Rick Moranis is really the only funny one in this entire cast. He has a couple moments that I'm guessing were improvised and he pulls off the timing really well. When he's playing with the action figures, that's really funny. Because Rick Moranis knows about comedic timing and does it well.

And that was really a problem with the jokes in this movie. The comedic timing was off if at all present. The best example I can think of is at the end, the bad guys are blasted to a tropical Island. A pair of Ape men (parodying Planet of the Apes) rides in and says, "Spaceballs... Whelp... there goes the planet"...

That's not funny.

And what about near the end (I know I'm doing a lot of jokes near the end but this isn't really a movie worth not spoiling... if there was anything to spoil). A young John Hurt (actually John Hurt) is at a cafe and suddenly starts screaming in pain. Suddenly an Alien rips out of his chest like it did in Alien. Then it tap dances out. That was the whole purpose of the cafe scene, that was the punch line.

It's not funny!

I have to repeat myself in that this is a hard movie to review because its a comedy. I may not think the alien tap dancing out of the room is funny but you may think its the most hilarious thing in the world just because its a little nod to Alien. I don't quite understand why but I can't tell you its not funny if you think it is.

I don't think I had ever seen this movie beginning to end before. I remember seeing clips of it and never really feeling the need to keep going with it. I think as a kid I thought some of the dick jokes were kind of funny and if that's your humor... well have fun with Spaceballs.

Maybe its cause I've grown up a little bit but even the lines that I thought were the most memorable (and there's not even that many lines worth quoting in this movie) like the part where they're about to lightsaber duel and Moranis says, "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine", I didn't really think it was that funny. I kinda rolled my eyes and sighed. Its not that I'm too mature for dick jokes, I just don't think that joke and pretty much any dick jokes in this movie are that clever.

You may be saying, "Connor, its a dick Joke, its not suppose to be clever. Hehehe dick."And you're partly right. But if a dick joke is just thrown in there, its only going for the people with the grotesque humor who think the word dick is funny. A dick joke, like any joke can be really funny if its done well and they weren't done well in this movie.

I may have gone too far into my analysis of dick jokes so I'm going to wrap this review up.

Overall, Spaceballs kinda sucked. It didn't parody the source material at all, it didn't have committed actors, and it just wasn't funny. (In my opinion of course)

But what do you think? Do you think Spaceballs is funny? Comment below and let me know.

I'll leave you with this. This isn't me saying, "Where has comedy brought itself to" its more honoring the classics of where comedy came from. Here's "Who's on First"