“Star Wars” is one of the most popular film franchises in the world. Since its original release in 1977, the movie has gone on to gross over $700 million. With this success, there also came attempts from people to obtain their own success based off of it.
One of these attempts came with famous parody filmmaker Mel Brooks. Famous for films like “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein”, he is a master of slapstick and parody.
“Spaceballs” is arguably Brook’s magnum opus. It is the quintessential display of his writing style, with jokes coming non-stop from every direction.
The premise of the film is not as predictable as one might expect. The film begins with an obscenely long open title crawl into a long shot of the entirety of the Spaceballs obscenely long ship.
The namesake of the film and the antagonist group, Spaceballs, plan to kidnap the princess of Druidia, a planet that bears a striking resemblance to Star Wars’ Naboo even though it predated Naboo by over a decade.
They intend to ransom Princess Vespa her for the code to their air shield. The Spaceballs had squandered their own atmosphere and needed a replacement.
At this time the main character Lone Starr and his half-man half-dog companion, Barf, are informed of their debt to Pizza the Hutt, a play of the “Star Wars” character Jabba the Hutt.
They are also immediately given a job from the king of Druidia to get back his daughter, who had run away from her arranged marriage to Prince Valium.
The duo accepts these terms and sets off, quickly finding Vespa but being pursued by the Spaceballs. Over the course of their journey back to Druidia, they face off with the dastardly leader of the Spaceballs, Dark Helmet—Lone Starr’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate.
They also discover Lone Starr to be a prince and are therefore eligible to marry Vespa. Then they all fly off into the sunset.
This plot is shockingly good; it’s not genius, but it doesn’t have to be. In a lot of parody movies, the plot is either completely ripped from the parodied material or is so thin that it’s completely forgettable, not so in “Spaceballs”. The plot is actually quite fun and provides an amazing platform for their jokes.
The jokes are the main attraction of any parody movie, and “Spaceballs” knocks it out of the park. The jokes range from the more obvious jokes to the names of characters and merchandising spoofs to more subtle and niche jokes like Dark Helmet pushing Colonel Sanders out of the way of a zoom-in or one of the characters being a reference to Max Headroom of all things.
This is all tied up in a film with not only a quick and witty sense of humor but also a fair bit of heart.
Maybe unexpected for a parody movie, but the film gets viewers to care about the characters, and the actors truly sell that sense of chemistry. The film is funny, but it is also an unironically enjoyable film.
Readers who are interested in Star Wars parody films or Mel Brooks films should do themselves a favor and give this film a watch.
Its jokes hit consistently, the actors are great and the special effects are surprisingly good because George Lucas’ special effects company helped with them. With a sequel finally coming out, this would be a perfect time to give it a look.
Andrew Barnes, staff writer
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