I'm not really sure how I feel about Mel Brooks. I think his style of obvious farcical comedy isn't very sophisticated. In fact, much of it is juvenile. Much of it isn't even that funny. But his movies are filled end to end with gags and jokes and for every four or five misses, he will hit a home run and have me roaring with laughter. I decided long ago that I didn't care much for him, yet I somehow kept on accumulating his movies over the years; The Producers, Blazing Saddles, History of the World, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Young Frankenstein, and Spaceballs (which I watched for the first time today). Despite my doubts about Brooks, I realized that I actually liked his movies. I distinctly remembered sitting through a couple of those films and thinking to myself, "Man this is really dumb," yet by the end of them, I thought, "I guess that was pretty funny. I had a pretty good time." And that's all you're really looking for in a Mel Brooks film, a super light weight kick back and relax have a couple of laughs good time.
Spaceballs is a Star Wars parody that probably feels less fresh today than it did years ago, before everyone and their mother made some type of Star Wars spoof, but it is still a pretty funny and enjoyable film. The film features the likes of somewhat familiar faces such as Dark Helmet, Pizza the Hutt, and Yogurt. I almost choked when I saw Pizza the Hutt, part of it due to my laughter and the other part to my disgust; he really is an awesomely gross looking character. The hero of the film is Lone Star, who is obviously Han Solo, yet dresses like Harrison Ford's other famous character, Indiana Jones. There is Barf, a half man half dog, hence a "mog." He is supposed to be Chewy. Princess Vespa is Leila and she is accompanied by a CP30 type droid, though surprisingly no R2D2. The plot is really an afterthought, so I won't even bother to mention it. But in case you're wondering, it doesn't completely follow the Star Wars storyline. After all, the purpose of the film isn't to do a shot by shot remake, but to simply set up scenarios for familiar scenes and lines.
As is customary with Mel Brooks' films, the focus is on the jokes and there are lots of them. Also customary is the fact that many of the jokes are stupid and not very funny such as the continuous gag of Dark Helmet bumping his helmet into things or the character of Yogurt all together. But some of the stupid jokes can be very funny as well. I laughed pretty hard during the scene when Dark Helmet is playing with the dolls. I laughed at some of the Jewish jokes and I'm not even Jewish! I laughed at other random things. That is all that really matters anyways, how much did you laugh, how much did you sit there stone faced refusing to crack a smile?
My guess is you either dig Mel Brooks or you don't, though some of his films are clearly better than others. I'm afraid Spaceballs falls somewhere on the lower spectrum of his movies, but for the most part I enjoyed it. It helps a lot to be a Star Wars fan to begin with, the bigger the better obviously to really enjoy it. That makes sense of course because what are you doing watching a satire of a movie you don't even care for to begin with? And if you don't like Star Wars, that probably means that you smell funny or you're a Communist, probably both.
Grade: C+
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