727. Spaceballs (1987)

Starring: Mel Brooks, John Candy, Rick Moranis

Director: Mel Brooks

Running Time: 97 mins

Spaceballs is an American film about the efforts of the evil lord Dark Helmet who plans to kidnap Princess Vespa of Druidia and hold her as a ransom for the entire air supply of the planet, however Lone Starr and Barf intervene to save the day.

Now, Mel Brooks is one of the silliest and most farcical directors and writers of all time, but, for some reason, this felt way too silly to be Brooks’ work. It’s an absolutely hilarious send-up of Star Wars, and the sci-fi genre as a whole, but to me, it did occasionally go just beyond that line of farce to total stupidity, where it lost a bit of its more witty and satirical touch.

However, I still absolutely love this film. It’s one of the best parodies I’ve ever seen, sticking right to the plot of the original Star Wars, yet going way off into some of the most ludicrous tangents and plots you’ll ever come across, yet the story itself, not being a total copy of Star Wars, is genuinely engaging to watch.

Meanwhile, the characters are also really clever and fun. There’s not only simply brilliant mick-takes of the actors who played the originals, or the characters’ names, but a whole host of hugely funny characteristics that really make them stand out themselves and be as exciting to watch as the original characters (except for Yoghurt, who just annoyed me).

And one of the best things about the way the characters work is that not the whole cast has been directly copied across. For instance, there’s no Luke, he’s moulded into the Han Solo character, Lone Starr, and there are various other people added in that make this story work on its own, because otherwise, some of the humour would have just felt a bit forced.

I’m a big fan of some of the more subtle movie references that they got packed in here, while the jokes about George Lucas and his mad merchandising were fantastically hilarious, however I’ve got to say that, at points, this film does go just a bit too far with its idiocy, and with some of the more forced jokes, it loses its uniquely Brooks-ish touch, but overall, this film still gets a 7.8 from me.