Spaceballs : Turner Classic Movies Review
Born in Brooklyn, a former entertainer in the Catskills, and writer for Sid
Caesar's landmark TV series Your Show of Shows in the 1950s, Mel Brooks
always carried into his film work the influence of Jewish humor, television
sketch comedy, and the kind of low vulgarity that makes critics groan but that
audiences love. His career up to this point has been bracketed by what many
consider his best film, The Producers (1968), and the mega-hit Broadway
show he adapted from that movie in 2001. In between he has tackled, with varying
degrees of success, movie genres of all types, spoofing Westerns (Blazing
Saddles, 1974), the classic Universal horror films (Young Frankenstein,
1974; Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 1995), pre-sound films (Silent
Movie, 1976), Hitchcock (High Anxiety, 1978), and historical costume
epics (History of the World: Part I, 1981; Robin Hood: Men in Tights,
1993). And although To Be or Not to Be (1983), in which he co-starred
with wife Anne Bancroft, was only produced by him and directed by Alan Johnson,
the picture bears so much of the Brooks stamp that he is often credited - or
more accurately, slammed - for this remake of Ernst Lubitsch's immortal 1942
anti-Nazi comedy.
Critics generally conceded that Spaceballs, his 1987 parody of the space
adventure genre (particularly Star Wars, 1977), arrived about a decade
too late and the jokes were stale. But audiences didn't seem to agree. Brooks'
most expensive film up to that point ($22.7 million), it earned $20 million in
its first two weeks of release. Its total take has been around $39 million in
theaters and nearly half that in video rentals.
Brooks plays President Skroob (an anagram of his own name), the evil leader of
the planet Spaceballs, who along with his henchman Dark Helmut, plots to kidnap
Princess Vespa of the planet Druidia ("the first Druish princess") and hold her
ransom in exchange for her home planet's vastly cleaner air. Vespa is eventually
rescued by Captain Lone Starr and his half-man, half-dog sidekick Barf ("I'm my
own best friend."). Brooks also plays the tiny, Yoda-like character called
Yogurt who is given to such declarations as "May the Schwartz be with you!"
Although Star Wars is the main target, viewers will recognize take-offs
on scenes from Planet of the Apes (1968), Alien (1979), the
Star Trek TV series, and even a classic cartoon, One Froggy Evening
(1955). Brooks has no compunction about throwing everything, including the
kitchen sink, into his movie parodies and he tells one story that affirms this
practice. In a 1987 interview in Vogue, Brooks said that when he was
preparing High Anxiety, he went to Alfred Hitchcock and said, "I'm going
to do The Birds [1963]; I'm going to do the shower!" Hitchcock allegedly
told him, "I loved Blazing Saddles. I trust you. I trust your
intelligence. And please, no holds barred. Do it all." Not content with letting
that evidence of approval stand, Brooks went on to say he showed the veteran
director a rough cut of the picture, and when Hitchcock's name came on the
screen, "he actually dabbed his eyes."
Not everyone finds Brook' work quite so touching, not even the stars of his
pictures, at least not at first. Daphne Zuniga, who portrays Vespa in
Spaceballs, said she found his movie parodies "too crass and just not
funny," but gained a different perspective after working with him. "I have this
image of Mel as totally wacko and out to lunch. And he is. But he's also really
perceptive, real sensitive in ways that make actors respond."
Director: Mel Brooks
Producer: Mel Brooks
Screenplay: Mel Brooks, Thomas Meehan, Ronny Graham
Cinematography: Nick McLean
Editing: Conrad Buff
Art Direction: Harold Michelson
Original Music: Dick Bauerle, Mel Brooks, Clyde Lieberman, John Morris, Jeffrey
Pescetto
Cast: Bill Pullman (Lone Starr), Daphne Zuniga (Vespa), John Candy (Barf), Rick
Moranis (Dark Helmut), Joan Rivers (voice of the robot Dot Matrix).
C-96m. Letterboxed.
by
Rob Nixon