04/30 (a): Spaceballs

One of the funniest movies of all-time from one of the funniest writers/directors of all-time is Spaceballs, or Spaceballs The Movie! Definitely not one to be taken seriously, but one brilliantly put together. I'm just glad it didn't spawn off a trilogy. This is, by the way, a parody of Star Wars and science fiction movies as a whole.

A whole line of characters are introduced in the movie, most of them a knock-off from Star Wars. Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his sidekick Barf (John Candy), the unlikely slacker heroes who travel in a space Winnebago. You also have Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) and her robot sidekick (very similar to C3PO), Dot Matrix (voiced by Joan Rivers). Then there's the bad guys, led by evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and President Skroob (Brooks, also acting in the film). Story goes like like this, as short as possible: Vespa escapes her pre-arranged wedding with Matrix and heads to space, only to be nearly captured by Helmet, and saved by Lone Starr. Helmet and his team are in pursuit of capturing the princess, going as far as the desert. In the desert, the good guys meet and become mentored by Yogurt (voiced by Brooks, similar to Yoda).

I always tell people this is one of my Top 5 Quotable movies of all-time. There's so many things I can repeat from this movie:
'What's the matter, Col. Sandurz? Chicken?'
'Ludicrous speed?'
'Say goodbye to your two best friends, and I don't mean the ones in the Winnebago'
'The schwartz is in you'

There's plenty of others, but I'm sure you get the idea! Also the sexual references that appear to be somewhat not that noticeable, but most people get it. I'm not sure why I consider this a perfect comedy, but as I mentioned before, a perfect comedy does have to have a happy ending. And this does, which I won't give away of course. But it's got some laughable scenes: Spaceballs the Movie on video already; the fight scene between Dark Helmet and Lone Starr; and Pizza the Hutt (another Star Wars knock-off). Perhaps the funniest thing is having nerdy, skinny good guy Rick Moranis playing the villain. Another great comic actor, the late John Candy, plays Barfolomew in such a classy way.

The one thing I don't get is the negative and mixed reviews from the so-called professional critics. Most of you know that I don't side with them most of the time. I go by my personal tastes, and also if there was a lot of effort put into the film I give it a deserving score. According to its Wikipedia page, critics did find it funny, but despite of that they thought it was extremely pointless to do a parody of the Star Wars trilogy at that time (1987). Since the Star Wars franchise is now considered timeless, it doesn't matter now.

Definitely a great movie for a great laugh. It's awesome that the movie is still carrying on to generations today as I recently read that Brooks said 'Spaceballs is what usually pays for my meals'. And its from the 80s, so look out for some retro-ness in the movie. It's hard to imagine a world or at least Hollywood without the genius of Mel Brooks.

My rating: 9 out of 10
Tomatometer: 54%