Spaceballs

SPACEBALLS

Space Balls

Mel Brooks (1987)

Space Balls is an obvious parody of Star Wars but no other parody can match the hilarious nature of Space Balls. I would only recommend this movie to those who appreciate ironic humor and the original Star Wars trilogy. The humor in the film is ageless due to Star Wars being a timeless classic, which much of this film’s humor is based off of. Similar to Ferris Bueller’s Day off this movie also breaks the fourth wall.

The plot unwinds itself in a fairytale manner. The movie begins with the Princess Vespa of the peaceful planet Druidia getting married. She doesn’t love the man she’s marrying so she flies away in her starship Mercedes mid wedding. Unfortunately for the Princess she encounters Darth Helmet, who tries to capture the Princess to use as ransom so he can obtain the air supply on Druidia for the planet Space Ball which is running out of air. Lone Starr and his friend Barf agree to rescue the Princess in return for a million space bucks so that they can repay their debts to the gangster Pizza the Hut. Lone Starr is able to rescue the Princess but he crashes his ship into a foreign planet where he encounters Yogurt who teaches Lone the powerful Schwartz which comes in handy when he must battle Darth Helmet in order to save the air supply of planet Druidia.

The film makes fun of some of the fads during the 80s, for example the scene where the actors actually watch the Space Balls vhs video during the film poking fun at video rental which was relatively new at that point. Action figures and product plugging are also mocked, due to the popularity of the Star Wars figures and the blatant advertising happening in movies.