Parody movies can be very rewarding to the viewer when they are done right. One example is Austin Powers (1997), a spoof of the James Bond series. One of the best parody movies came out in the 1980s and parodied the “Star Wars” franchise; it was called Spaceballs (1987).
The premise of the film is that President Skroob (Mel Brooks) wants to steal all the fresh air from the planet Druidia; to do so, he sends Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) along with his subordinate Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) to kidnap Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), who is getting married. However, the princess manages to escape, as she does not wish to get married, taking her robot, Dot Matrix (Joan Rivers), with her. Her father, King Roland (Dick Van Patten) contacts Lone Starr (Bill Pullman), a mercenary who is in debt, to accomplish the task of rescuing the princess. After negotiating a price, Lone Starr and his mawg, (half man, half dog) companion Barf (John Candy) go on the mission to rescue to the princess.
All of the actors put on a great performance. A highlight is how the characters of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were amalgamated into one character, which is mostly due to Bill Pullman being able to pull off the role. Rick Moranis did a hilarious job playing Dark Helmet who is the woefully incompetent antagonist.
The jokes in the movies are plentiful; many of them making their mark as just being plain hilarious. An example is when Dark Helmet and Sandurz were forcing King Roland to give them the combination to the air shield; the combination was just simply “1-2-3-4-5,” leading Helmet to rambling how idiotic it is, until it is revealed that Skroob has the same combination on his luggage. Another great joke was when Lone Starr and Barf spotted Dark Helmet’s ship, Spaceball 1, and decided to “jam” radar by actually shooting a jar of jam at the ship’s communication antenna, resulting in a disruption of their systems.
The writing was also very well done. One thing that was great was how self-aware the film was. It was amusing that the movie would break the fourth wall and just acknowledge that they’re in a movie; it was done very subtly which was great. I thought it was also funny that they took a jab at George Lucas, who created the Star Wars franchise, in regards to the merchandising that Lucas was doing to his franchise.
All in all, if you want to watch a movie that parodies a classic film, then Spaceballs is the one for you. With the terrific acting, brilliant writing and jokes that will keep you in stitches, you simply cannot go wrong with a film like this. For that, it needs to be respected.
