Flashback Cinema: Spaceballs

[monitor_ep]

To celebrate Mel Brooks 100 birthday the Flashback Cinema at theaters are showing the original Spaceballs
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To be truthful I am not sure I watched this at the theater. I have seen several times on home VHS/dvd. My BF and nephew have never seen it so this is going to be interesting.

"A star-pilot for hire and his trusty half-dog sidekick must come to the rescue of a spoiled princess and save Planet Druidia from the clutches of the evil Spaceballs."

The thing was we were the only ones in the room. It's was sad but we enjoyed it.

[Dan2Dan]

Wow, this brings back some memories. I saw "Spaceballs" in the cinema as a teenager back in the 80s. Going in, my enthusiasm was Sky High. I had really loved Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part II" and "The Producers," and really liked several of his other films. And "Star Wars" was (and remains) among my all-time favorite films. How could this not be great?

And I walked out thinking to myself, "I don't think Mel Brooks had more than a superficial understanding of what he was parodying. And there was this odd emphasis on Yiddishisms, and The Schwartz, and a lot of 'Oy' this and that." That being said, one of my best friends of 35 years now, who has always shared with me a love of Star Wars (and the like), which he has successfully passed to his own son, and who happens also to be a Jewish guy from New York, completely loved (and still loves) the film and still brings it up today. Pizza The Hut, in particular, really resonated with him.

In contrast, Yogurt and Pizza the Hut and The Schwartz and Joan Rivers as C3PO, and 'combing the Tatooine desert' with an afro pick all landed really flat with me. Probably because I love "Star Wars" so much, and probably because I was really hoping, as a teenage boy, that Mel Brooks would lean into his sexual, R-rated humor a lot more than he did. I remember at the time, the film's promotion (fronted by Mel Brooks) and the film itself kept referencing how the film was merely a calculated money grab, parodying the biggest IP on the planet. But in fact, that's how it actually played for me.