Spaceballs (1987)

"There is only one man who would dare give me the raspberry: Lone Star!"

There was bound to be a proper Star Wars spoof sooner or later, and always a fair chance that it would be Mel Brooks who did it. It's a fairly straight spoof, really, with counterparts for every major character aside from Luke Skywalker. But then Luke Skywalker is incredibly boring, so who cares?

The characters generally pass muster; Bill Pullman makes a good Harrison Ford and a good star. It's fun to see Rick Moranis as the Darth Vader character, and even more eyebrow-raising to see Joan Rivers, of all people, as the C-3PO equivalent. There are lots of amusing digs at the original movies, of course- we get a gangster called Pizza the Hut and an amusing sight gag at the start as the camera pans across a long, long, long Star Destroyer. Still, these things are funny, but this is no Airplane.

I liked the metatextual bits, mind: Barf comments on a "nice dissolve" at one pont, and I love the moment where the Spaceballs reach into their home video collection (all Mel Brooks movies, naturally) to play the movie they're currently making, in real time. There are loads of little touches like this (I love the moment where Dark Helmet accidentally kills a cameraman during the lightsabre fight!), and they're my favourite thing about the film. There are some nice pop culture references, too, including a Transformer(!) and a cameo from John Hurt reprising that scene from Alien. And I loved the name "Prince Valium". Although not as much as "Colonel Sanders"…

I was perpetually amused at how similar to Earth this far, far, far, far away galaxy was; on Druidia they even conduct their weddings to a blast of Wagner's Wedding March, apparently. They have bumper stickers in the future. The telephones, videotapes and headphones are all very '80s, and characters are heard playing Bon Jovi and Berlin. They even have Jewish humour and loads of it- the Schwarz is Yiddish slang for, well, er, what gets implied at the start of the lightsabre fight. And we get lines about a "Druish princes" and how "she doesn't look Druish". Still, I'm sure there was a lot more of this that went right over my head.

Spaceballs might not be the greatest comedy ever made, but it's a fun way to spend an hour and a half. It's a deceptively clever spoof with a lot to say about the media and how merchandising is taking over popular cinema, to the point of Dark Helmet playing with Kenner action figures. I enjoyed it a lot, and I intend to do some more Mel Brooks stuff soon. I haven't seen any for ages.