Camp in Space!
Main Cast: Bill Pullman, John Candy, Daphne Zuniga, Rick Moranis
Director: Mel Brooks
Wonderful camp to the point (and beyond) of extreme silliness, Spaceballs simply takes nothing, not even itself, seriously. Sci-fi is the engine that drives it, but it certainly remains in the realm of Earthbound circus acts or comedy routines.
The plot? Well- how about, the threads of a story that lead from one funny situation to another? We have two free-wheeling mercenaries, Lone Starr (Pulman) and Barf (Candy). They have a problem: how to come up with $1,000,000 spacebucks to pay back Pizza the Hut? Fortunately for them, the Spaceballs, led by Lord Dark Helmet (Moranis), have kidnapped the Princess Vespa (Zuniga) for blackmail purposes. See, planet Spaceball has used up all its air, so it needs to import it from somewhere. And that somewhere is the planet Druidia.
That’s the setup. Yes, the princess is rescued by the scruffy mercenary, and at first they hate each other, but… okay, I need not go on. This movie yanks out so many cliches it revels in them. Sets them up and knocks them down relentlessly. How can you not smile when, during the rescue, a radar dish is “jammed”? Or the wizened old Yogurt (played by Brooks) obtains most of his riches by… merchandising?
A great and silly romp through the Universe, everything about this flick is designed to elicit a grin, if not a laugh. I can definitely recommend this one to one and all.
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