Brooks has satirized westerns, silent films, horror films, Hitchcock thrillers, and period piece epics. Each genre as important to film history as the other. But in 1987, Brooks took aim at the film that revolutionized entertainment and changed the way films were made, and indeed marketed, forever. STAR WARS.
Bill Pullman is charming Lone Starr, a dashing rogue with a mysterious past. He and Candy have legitimately good chemistry and the two would make a good team in a better movie. Looking at him, you think, "I would vote for that man if he ran for President."
Daphne Zuniga plays Princess Vespa. She's very attractive and willing which is all the part required. She is constantly pursued, though never aided by her servant, a trashy golden robot named Dot Matrix, voiced by the late Joan Rivers. I constantly felt bad for Joan. Her character doesn't do anything and I can't imagine Joan found any of these jokes funny. She's forced to deliver lines like, "I couldn't hold my oil."
The two shining stars of this galactic farce are John Candy as Barf (hear me out) and Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet. Both are playing to type but they embrace it so thoroughly, its hard not to laugh. Candy plays Lone Starr's co-pilot, a Mog (half man, half dog, his own best friend) and his cowardly sincerity, wagging tail, and perky ears go a long way. But the real winner in this picture is Dark Helmet and the inspired casting of Rick Moranis. Moranis made a career out of playing lovable losers. Here he is appropriately, hilariously dweeby and pathetic. Making "Darth Vader has asthma" jokes is nothing new but this is the first time it felt earned. He squeezes every drop of comedy out of the character.
Brooks plays two roles. His scenes as the malevolent President Skroob are often funny. His scenes as Master Yogurt (get it?) are not.
Unlike Brooks' more successful parodies, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, the social commentary and the plot don't ever move hand in hand. The merchandising of Star Wars, as inescapable now as it was 40 years ago, never effectively synchronizes with the plot. The result is a comedy that stops for jokes and a plot that doesn't mean anything.
This is a really strange film for Brooks, not because there isn't comedic fruit, people have been making fun of these movies for decades, but because while Blazing Saddles made fun of westerns, High Anxiety made fun of Alfred Hitchcock's filmography, and History of the World made fun of period piece epics, Spaceballs is making fun of one film specifically. Its even more specific than Young Frankenstein. The film doesn't so much reference or poke fun at other science fiction films or tropes as it does mention them directly ("Why not? It worked in Star Trek."). This could have been a parody of how films tried to copy the Star Wars formula with diminishing returns. Instead, it becomes one of them.
Long gone are the days of The Producers when Brooks would write a cohesive story. Spaceballs is so rigidly tied to Star Wars' structure that it is incapable of breathing. Its hampered by a spine that wasn't meant to be funny, and in the few moments it breaks away from that skeleton, like when Dark Helmet fulfills his deepest fantasies with action figures, it suddenly snaps back into its unfunny plot. The Producers set out to find a play so horrible that it would be a surefire flop. Blazing Saddles put a black sheriff in charge of a racist town. Notice something similar? Both plots contain comedic conflict. And here is Spaceballs' plot synopsis according to IMDB, "Planet Spaceball's President Skroob sends Lord Dark Helmet to steal Planet Druidia's abundant supply of air to replenish their own, and only Lone Starr can stop them." Where is the comedy in that? From the names, I guess.
This movie may be the definition of "it was funny at the time" humor. In the first 10 minutes, we already have two bumper sticker jokes. Jabba the Hutt is replaced by Pizza the Hutt and its the only time Brooks outdoes Lucas. Jabba is a fat slug but Pizza the Hutt is flat out revolting. Now if only the gag made us laugh instead of... gag. But then there are things that are dated or just plain boring to begin with. Michael Winslow, the funny noise guy from Police Academy, remember him? Yeah, he's here to do the same schtick. The only people to do something original with that premise were Key and Peele. But then there's jokes about matching luggage, industrial strength hair dryers, and robotic henchmen who talk like 20s New York gangsters and wear zoot suits. The Millennium Falcon is replaced with a Winnebago and in the climax, the bad guys' ship turns into a giant robotic cleaning lady with a vacuum. It sucks.
And don't get me started on Yogurt and the Schwartz. Is this a Schwarzenegger joke? Is it a jewish sounding word? I don't know but what's worse, I ain't laughin.
Daphne Zuniga plays Princess Vespa. She's very attractive and willing which is all the part required. She is constantly pursued, though never aided by her servant, a trashy golden robot named Dot Matrix, voiced by the late Joan Rivers. I constantly felt bad for Joan. Her character doesn't do anything and I can't imagine Joan found any of these jokes funny. She's forced to deliver lines like, "I couldn't hold my oil."
The two shining stars of this galactic farce are John Candy as Barf (hear me out) and Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet. Both are playing to type but they embrace it so thoroughly, its hard not to laugh. Candy plays Lone Starr's co-pilot, a Mog (half man, half dog, his own best friend) and his cowardly sincerity, wagging tail, and perky ears go a long way. But the real winner in this picture is Dark Helmet and the inspired casting of Rick Moranis. Moranis made a career out of playing lovable losers. Here he is appropriately, hilariously dweeby and pathetic. Making "Darth Vader has asthma" jokes is nothing new but this is the first time it felt earned. He squeezes every drop of comedy out of the character.
Brooks plays two roles. His scenes as the malevolent President Skroob are often funny. His scenes as Master Yogurt (get it?) are not.
This is a really strange film for Brooks, not because there isn't comedic fruit, people have been making fun of these movies for decades, but because while Blazing Saddles made fun of westerns, High Anxiety made fun of Alfred Hitchcock's filmography, and History of the World made fun of period piece epics, Spaceballs is making fun of one film specifically. Its even more specific than Young Frankenstein. The film doesn't so much reference or poke fun at other science fiction films or tropes as it does mention them directly ("Why not? It worked in Star Trek."). This could have been a parody of how films tried to copy the Star Wars formula with diminishing returns. Instead, it becomes one of them.
Long gone are the days of The Producers when Brooks would write a cohesive story. Spaceballs is so rigidly tied to Star Wars' structure that it is incapable of breathing. Its hampered by a spine that wasn't meant to be funny, and in the few moments it breaks away from that skeleton, like when Dark Helmet fulfills his deepest fantasies with action figures, it suddenly snaps back into its unfunny plot. The Producers set out to find a play so horrible that it would be a surefire flop. Blazing Saddles put a black sheriff in charge of a racist town. Notice something similar? Both plots contain comedic conflict. And here is Spaceballs' plot synopsis according to IMDB, "Planet Spaceball's President Skroob sends Lord Dark Helmet to steal Planet Druidia's abundant supply of air to replenish their own, and only Lone Starr can stop them." Where is the comedy in that? From the names, I guess.
This movie may be the definition of "it was funny at the time" humor. In the first 10 minutes, we already have two bumper sticker jokes. Jabba the Hutt is replaced by Pizza the Hutt and its the only time Brooks outdoes Lucas. Jabba is a fat slug but Pizza the Hutt is flat out revolting. Now if only the gag made us laugh instead of... gag. But then there are things that are dated or just plain boring to begin with. Michael Winslow, the funny noise guy from Police Academy, remember him? Yeah, he's here to do the same schtick. The only people to do something original with that premise were Key and Peele. But then there's jokes about matching luggage, industrial strength hair dryers, and robotic henchmen who talk like 20s New York gangsters and wear zoot suits. The Millennium Falcon is replaced with a Winnebago and in the climax, the bad guys' ship turns into a giant robotic cleaning lady with a vacuum. It sucks.
And don't get me started on Yogurt and the Schwartz. Is this a Schwarzenegger joke? Is it a jewish sounding word? I don't know but what's worse, I ain't laughin.
One of the defining traits of Mel Brooks' career has been his passion for meta comedy. He has implemented it as an unexpected finale of 'Blazing Saddles' and he has used it as a crutch when he couldn't think of an ending for 'History of the World.' Now Brooks embraces the insanity and brandishes the absurdity with a bold confidence. Star Wars is, after all, the film that practically defined merchandising. I would go so far as to wager that it was the Spaceballs merchandising joke alone that inspired Brooks to make this entire film. Around half way through the movie, the hapless villains are at a loss for what to do. "We'll consult the videotape!" declares Colonel Sandurz. They open up their VHS collection, containing all of Brooks' previous filmography, and pop in Spaceballs. They fast forward, black and white squiggles covering what we've already seen in a way that only those of the VHS generation will remember. Then they reach where we are now. Dark Helmet and Sandurz see themselves in real time. The movie is watching itself. This is it, guys, the singularity. The only way to go further will be for the movie to show us the ending at the middle and be done with it.
This film has one major problem that I jut can't overlook and that is that it is very negative and mean-spirited towards the subject matter. I know that I can't be impartial. My love for Star Wars goes back longer than I can remember. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Brooks really doesn't like Star Wars and that, in the end, he just thinks its stupid. Try as he might, he's always under Star Wars' shadow. Go watch Family Guy's "Blue Harvest" if you want to see a Star Wars parody done right. Not every joke lands, but most of them do and there's love in the work. Brooks comes across as resentful and bitter at what Star Wars has done to the world. But his movie doesn't exist on its own. Its not a glaring take-down or even a chink the the armor. Its a crass, ugly film that tries to be funny and occasionally succeeds but never lets us forget, with every bit of gross-out humor, and every lightsaber dick joke, and every empty second devoid of laughter, that we could be watching an infinitely better film.
No comments:
Post a Comment