Before you read this review, let us first orient ourselves to a few dates.

We’re about to reminisce about a movie released in 1987, set in a distant future. The characters tweak fat dials to enhance the image on their monochromatic space-ship computer screens, and the intercom units look suspiciously like old ham radio speakers, complete with curly cords and a button taking up most of one side.

Our movie’s heroine escapes her arranged marriage (more on the plot in a sec) in a “brand new 2001 Mercedes” with whiz-bang features like Delorean-wing doors, a sun roof, and car phone about the size of the fifth Harry Potter book.

I’m writing this in August of 2010, using a netbook with Wi-Fi and multitask-texting my friend on my touch-screen smart phone (and drinking Riesling out of a coffee mug, but some things in my life will never change).

So clearly, we can’t grade this movie on the same curve as, say, Avatar, or Episodes I, II and III of Star Wars. In special effects terms, it wouldn’t even be fair to compare Spaceballs to a first season episode of Buffy.

So, let’s put it in the category it belongs: slapstick send-up of the space movie genre (primarily the original Star Wars with hints of Alien, Planet of the Apes, Star Trek and more), an awesome cult-ish movie from a bygone era that is precious to those who grew up with it, and will likely win the hearts of a few more generations before fading away (or being remade, since that’s so IN right now). And truly, genuinely funny.

OK, the plot: In the distant future (no, not a long time ago) in a galaxy far, far away… The foolish citizens of Planet Spaceball have almost run out of breathable air. The obvious solution? Steal it from a peaceful neighbouring planet! One that keeps its air encapsulated within an air shield, if you have one on hand. You do? Excellent! So, off we journey to Planet Druidia, where it so happens that Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga -- where’d she disappear to?) is about to submit to an arranged marriage to Prince Valium (one of the first of Mel Brooks’ famed and awesome plays on words in this epic) at the urging of her father, King Roland. “But Daddy, I don’t love him!” she whines, allowing Roland to fill us in on his dilemma: Princesses MUST marry Princes in this Universe. And as Valium is the last of that kind (ignoring Prince Murray, mentioned barely 5 minutes later but presumably off the market?), then Vespa must suck it up, Princess, and marry the douche.

But she doesn’t!! (Or we’d have had a short and boring film). She flees the wedding (in the aforementioned Mercedes 2-seater space ship) with her trusty droid “Dot Matrix”. And here we have the first of the slightly dated jokes that Mel Brooks could not have foreseen his way out of: does anyone under 25 today actually know what a Dot Matrix was?

Moving right along. The nefarious Spaceball army, onsite for that mission to steal Planet Druidia’s air, plan to do so by kidnapping Vespa and blackmailing King Roland for access inside the air shield. With minutes remaining before she is captured by the Spaceballs, Vespa calls her father on the world’s largest car phone to request help, which Roland dispatches in the form of roguish space hero, Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his Mawg (half-man half-dog) copilot Barf (the late, great John Candy)…

(Are we keeping up with the Star Wars stuff? Roll call: we have Han Solo and Chewbacca -- no Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan in this spoof, sorry -- Leia with a female C-3PO, and our dastardly Darth Vader villain, deserving his own paragraph entirely)

… who succeed in rescuing the princess from the clutches of the evil Dark Helmet just in time. Aaaah, Dark Helmet. I had to give Rick Moranis his own special mention here for one big reason: The “playing with your dolls again, sir!” scene (if you haven’t seen the movie, then why are you reading the review!?! If that reference was lost on you, pause right here, rent the movie, then return to me later) was entirely ad-libbed by Moranis. And for that I want to have his babies.

Our other villain is writer/director himself, Mel Brooks, as leader of the Spaceball populace, President Skroob (delivering the second hugely out-of-date joke with the line “chew your gum”, referring to some old TV advertising campaign that, really was never going to stand the test of time). Brooks double-casts himself as a good guy (and injures himself in the process, shuffling about on his knees) as we finish our Star Wars character shout-out with the wise, the all-powerful… Yogurt: Keeper and teacher of the Schwartz.

Yoghurt doubles as Basil Exposition (subtle reference to Michael York’s uncredited voiceover late in the movie, for those who’d like some Pop Up Video-style captioning for this review) by explaining the Schwartz to our motley crew of good guys, imparting the “ring of the Schwartz” and a brief telekinesis training session on hero Lone Star, among other things which shall be left out of this summary in the interest of remaining spoiler-free.

The remaining shenanigans cannot be described in depth without ruining the ending for the uninitiated, so let’s take a moment here to observe a few of the Mel Brooks-isms that make this movie so great. We have the self-referential hilarity brought to a whole new level with the “instant cassette” rental of Spaceballs: The Movie whilst it is still being made. We have the bad guys (a young Stephen Toblowski -- hi, Ned Ryerson!) catching the good guys’ stunt doubles during a dramatic chase scene (Dainty Princess Vespa replaced by a surly moustachioed man, to add to the fun). We have the very Melbrooksian habit of breaking the fourth wall (which in my opinion reached its Melbrooskian pinnacle with “unlike other Robin Hoods… I can speak with an English accent!” in Men in Tights). We have the who’s-who-of-the-80s cameo casting (Michael Winslow, one man sound effects machine and John Hurt, complete with chest-bursting alien). Aaaand we have the plays-on-words and memorable quotes that are still funny today. A few faves: So, Spaceballs… is it well acted? Absolutely, if you understand that “campy” and “overplayed” were probably stage directions. Is it well cast? Yes. Daphne Zuniga is beautiful, fiery, strong, and now reasonably obscure; Bill Pullman is funny, masculine, equal parts tough/cocky and tender/uncertain, an ideal romantic lead right up until he kisses Princess Vespa with his eyes conspicuously open. Rick Moranis and the Spaceball leaders are the real scene stealers in this ensemble, but would you except any less of Moranis?? (Seriously, Rick, call me.)

Will the next generation love it and watch it and introduce their own children to it? Hopefully a good chunk of them will… if they can tear themselves away from their 3D HDTVs and Playstation 7s and suspend their disbelief into accepting a slapstick comedy where the laughable “special effects” take a backseat to snappy dialogue and in-jokes they’re not in on. And if not, we’ll just have to hope for a resurgence if Mel Brooks ever delivers on the promised sequel: Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money!

  -- Cathy Thomson

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