Artist Spaceballs

With Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks effectively married clever genre parody with his manic, joke-a-minute style to create classic comedies that stand apart from their source materials. It’s hard to say the same of Spaceballs, Brooks’ 1987 Stars Wars take-off. Even for Brooks, who never met a bad vaudeville-style groaner he couldn’t squeeze into a screenplay, Spaceballs is somewhat wearying, marking a transition from Brooks’ inspired early romps to the tired “spoof” movies we know and loathe today. Still, for every overly obvious, Borscht-y gag (“May the Schwartz be with you!”), Spaceballs boasts more than a few redeeming lines to justify its cult following.

Updated 07/01/2009