Random Movie Review - Spaceballs

With Star Wars being bigger than it has been in the past several years, I thought to look at a little film that parodies the original trilogy and other big sci-fi franchises like Star Trek, Planet of the Apes and Alein. I am of course talking about Spaceballs. A cult classic, this film has been regarded as one of the best parody films out there and unlike more recent parody films which pack in far too much, this film just stuck to Star Wars while including some small references to the other previously mentioned films. So now that I can finally understand the Spaceballs jokes in the Nostalgia Critic videos, let's journey to a galaxy not so far away:

So right off the bat, the film begins with the iconic title crawl that the Star Wars films (at least the episodic ones) are known for. So there's this planet called Planet Spaceball which is led by the incompetent President Skroob (played by the legend that is Mel Brooks) who somehow, has wasted all of the planet's fresh air. In the hopes to get its air back, the president hatches a plan to kidnap Princess Vespa (played by Daphne Zuniga), the daughter of King Roland (played by Dick Van Patten) of the planet Druidia and will hand her over in exchange for the planet's fresh air and has Dark Helmet (obvious parody of Darth Vader, played by the great Rock Moranis) set out to do the job on his ship, Spaceball One. However, things don't go according to plan when Vespa escapes the planet and in turn, her pre-arranged marriage which forces the king to enlist the help of mercenary Lone Starr (obvious parody of Han Solo, played by the great Bill Pullman) and his half man, half dog companion (mog for short) Barf (obvious parody of Chewbacca, played by the late John Candy) to find her and bring her back in exchange for a lucrative reward. This is then followed by a number of shenanigans, 4th wall breaking and mentions/references of the aforementioned franchises.

Now prior to reviewing this film, for many years I only managed to watch some of it whenever it was shown on TV. Then more recently, Netflix had it in their library and so I managed to finally watch it in full and I can honestly say, its great. Some of the jokes may be dated now that VHS is a thing of the past, but everything about this film feels like a true parody to Star Wars. You get new and funnier takes on familiar characters, many pop culture references and just everything about it is funny. Aside from all the great parodies that are online on sites like YouTube and Newgrounds, this film is among the best I have seen thus far and its certainly not going to be topped any time soon, given where things are going with film parodies in recent years. 9/10