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Movie:		7.0
Picture:		7.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		8.0
Score:		7.0

Director(s):	Mel Brooks
Writer(s):	Mel Brooks, Thomas Meehan
Starring:	Bill Pullman • Daphne Zuniga • Joan Rivers • John Candy • Mel Brooks • Rick Moranis
Genre:	Comedy • Sci-Fi
Website:	http://www.mgm.com/title_title.php?title_star=SPACEBAL
Release Date:	June 16, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $18.49
Amazon:

If you ask someone what their favorite Sci-fi spoof movie is, chances are Spaceballs will be mentioned. It’s the as-of-yet unmatched parody of Star Wars (and Star Trek, etc.) that just can’t seem to be replaced. It’s not even Mel Brooks’s best work, but it has a stranglehold on the genre. Brooks has a comic sensibility that many filmmakers can only dream of: the timing is perfect, the casting is always top-notch and the scripts have that necessary balance of self-importance and ridiculous notion to keep the entire scramble of a genre in one piece. Unfortunately, Spaceballs seems to grow dimmer as opposed to brighter as time marches on – but that has a lot to do with Mel’s self-professed, basic principle of parody: you can’t parody what you don’t love. Alas, the world has fallen out of love with Star Wars and Spaceballs feels it.

The Spaceballs are a greedy, vicious lot whose planet long ago ran out of air thanks to their civilization’s wasteful ways. Leaving their planet behind, the Spaceballs took to the stars and decide to steal the air from the neighboring planet Druidia. The higher-ups of the Spaceballs, Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis), President Skroob (Mel Brooks) and Colon Sandurz (George Wyner) guide their ship of inbred assholes to abduct Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) of Druidia just as she’s ditching her arranged marriage. Vespa’s father calls upon the aid of Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his mawg accomplice Barf (John Candy) to rescue his daughter. Along the way romance blossoms, the Schwartz is discovered and climactic battles occur – all with that laugh-a-minute pacing Brooks is famous for.

The real failing here is not a lack of brilliance in Spaceballs’ script – because it’s there. Unquestionably. The problem arises from most of these great jokes being so memorable that upon the second or third viewing you’ve already laughed at the joke before it’s even come on screen – it’s just that comfortable. And that’s a great thing – all comedies ever made hope for such a status with their viewers. But after the fourth or fifth viewing, Spaceballs’ jokes feel worn out instead of comfortable. The comedic shoes which carried us for five years suddenly seem worn down – the soles [read: jokes] too thin to hold the movie over for another 96 minutes. Spaceballs is hilarious, but it requires a bit of time between each watch. The jokes aren’t as layered as Blazing Saddles, where you can watch it two times in a month and laugh at all the small sub-textual things you missed the first time through. Spaceballs has a much more overt comedy to it and so requires longer periods of absence to make the heart grow fond again.

While Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga and Joan Rivers (as the C-3PO look alike Dot Matrix) have their moments, this film will always rest on the humorous laurels of Rick Moranis and John Candy to make it great. If you ever want a film to make you regret Moranis’s departure from acting – this is it. As Dark Helmet he’s superb. His reactions, his spit takes, everything. God, I miss him. The same is true of John Candy. The man lights up the screen even when he has ridiculous prosthetic ears mounted to his head.

Visually Spaceballs gets only a minor visual bump from the Blu-ray transfer. If you want proof, Fox has graciously bundled the Blu-ray with a DVD copy (an exact replica of the ones most of us have on our shelves; barebones extra features and all). The sound however still has a few issues here and there. At moments the sound betrays its lo-fi heritage and it can be painfully audible, whereas at other times (in the most action-packed sequences) it’s a better sampling. A decent transfer, but by no means perfect.

Blu-ray Bonus Features

If there’s any real incentive to pick-up the Blu-ray, it’s in here. Finally, after all these years, Mel Brooks and company have seen fit to give the audience genuine behind the camera retrospectives beyond the meager audio commentary brought over from the DVD. While we’re talking about audio commentaries, I was a bit disappointed to discover that the Mawgese and Dinkese audio commentaries mentioned on the case are nothing more than a throw away 25 second gag. How great would a feature-length audio commentary of “dinkdink DINK dink DINK DINK” have been? Sigh. But anyways, the three featurettes of note are a piece on John Candy where his friends talk about the man and the actor; a 20 minute conversation between Mel Brooks and co-writer Thomas Meehan discussing the origins of the story; and finally “Spaceballs: The Documentary”, the real meat and potatoes of the disc. It may only be 30-minutes long, but considering it’s more than we’ve ever had offered and the amount the dump into it, it’s a nice piece to have (finally). Beyond that there’s a storyboard-to-film comparison with side-by-side clips, some picture galleries, a mistake reel and a trailer with an intro by Mel Brooks. These last few are all rather unimportant but worth a look for the fans finally relishing Spaceballs extras.

The extra features almost help us forgive Mel Brooks for selling Spaceballs into animation hell with Spaceballs the animated series.