Spaceballs

Directed by Mel Brooks, Spaceballs follows Bill Pullman’s reluctant hero Lone Starr as he and his loyal half-man/half-dog partner (John Candy’s Barf) attempt to rescue a space princess (Daphne Zuniga’s Vespa) from the clutches of a maniacal villain named Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis). Filmmaker Mel Brooks, working from a script written with Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan, delivers a perpetually silly (and somewhat erratic) yet mostly engaging comedy that benefits from its affable performances and raft of memorably broad gags and set-pieces, as the movie, which spoofs the various Star Wars pictures to agreeable effect, has been suffused with a pervasively larger-than-life atmosphere that does, in the end, compensate for its periodic bumps and lulls (ie there’s a hit-and-miss quality to the various jokes that’s never even remotely as problematic as one might’ve anticipated, ultimately). And while Brooks does a superb job of eliciting top-notch work from his various periphery players, including George Wyner and Brooks himself, Spaceballs‘ success is due in large part to the completely captivating (and almost iconic) efforts of its charming above-the-line stars – with, in particular, Pullman, Candy, and Moranis elevating the proceedings on a regular basis and ensuring, in the end, that the film remains entertaining even through its less-than-enthralling stretches.

*** out of ****