It’s very silly and very dated, but it’s still a classic in its own right way, funny in all its adorable silliness so very 80s. I still find the robot very annoying (specially in the Italian version because of the thick accent totally out of place), and who knows why but seeing it now the pizza-man-boss made my stomach twist in desperation, luckily it wasn’t on screen for long or I would have had to say goodbye to my dinner, euch.
It starts with an on-screen-moving description like Star Wars, only this is less epic and more fun. We learn that the planet Spaceball has no air left so they plan to steal it from the neighbour planet Duidia, where princess Vespa is about to get married to Prince Valium simply because he’s the only prince left in the whole universe apparently, and being a princess she has to marry a prince so her father insists on the marriage even if none of them seems eager about it.
When the Spaceball ship makes its entrance, it’s funny by itself how absurdly long it is, it goes on and on... :lol: Helmet is the villain in command, a little guy with a huge black helmet, he can barely breath with that thing on. The crew is entirely composed by people named Assholes, so Helmet realises that he’s ‘surrounded by assholes’.
Vespa runs away in her white mercedes-spaceship with her loyal robot-maid. Spaceballs try to capture her but she calls her dad for help and he hires Lone Starr and his loyal partner barf, a mog, half man half dog, the best friend of himself... They save Vespa and the robot and Vesta and LoneStarr start bickering until they get a look at each other and quite like what they're seeing... still they keep bickering because she’s very snob and spoiled.
LoneStarr only accepted because he owes lots of money to PizzaTheHutt. They escape in LS’s camper-spaceship that Wikipedia calls Winnebago, and Helmet orders pursuit at Ludicrous Speed... which was not a good move for his health.
LS and company have to stop at a moon because their ship ran out of gas and they walk in the desert until they pass out (I understand LS carrying the girl, but why Barf has to carry the robot... maybe her rollerblade-feet can’t walk on sand? well, she walked before, so what, the robot got tired???)
They are saved by six little figures who give them water and take them to Yogurt, the great wiseman and master of the Schwartz (why the schwartz? has anyone ever explained that? I mean, it works really well in Italian, ‘sforzo’ instead of ‘forza’, but in English, why schwartz?)
Yogurt shows them all the Spaceball-the-movie-merchandise he’s going to sell, including the Spaceball-flame-thrower that the kids love so much, and then gives LS a ring so he can use the schwartz too.
LS and Vespa already got close to each other but they never even kissed because the robot has a ‘virgin alert’ that goes off even if she’s on ‘sleep mode’...
To find out where they are, Helmet and the Captain watch the movie-VHS, watching a bit of what we’ve already seen, and what they’re doing right now, and finally where the others are, so they follow to the letter the President’s orders and they comb the desert with huge combs...
They manage to kidnap Vespa. Helmet is embarrassed when the Captain enters his cabin without knocking but luckily the captain says that “I didn’t see you play with your dolls again”.
They call Vespa’s father to get the combination so they can approach his planet: the combination is 12345, and Helmet says it’s “the kind of combination an idiot would have on his luggage” and sure enough that’s the combination the President uses on his luggage..
LS and Barf go to rescue Vespa and the robot, they escape together and the clumsy Spaceball make a mistake and capture their stunt doubles instead of the real ones...
They are now close to the planet Druidia and the huge spaceship transforms itself into MegaMaid, a sort of statue of liberty with a huge vacuum cleaner to suck all Druidia’s air. LS uses the schwartz to move the switch to "reverse" and the air is blown back onto Druidia.
They try now to destroy the MegaMaid, entering its ear and looking for an autodestruction-button. LS finds it, but has to fight against Helmet to get to it. First he has to knock out a guard with the Vulcan neck pinch, then Helmet arrives. LS: “at last we meet for the first time for the last time” then he stops to rethink the phrase in his head to be sure he got it right :p then Helmet has the big revelation for him (no, not Luke I am your father, no). It’s actually: “I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate” - “what does that make us?” - “absolutely nothing” ...
After the autodestruction is activated they flee with their sheep. All the crew escapes with emergency pods but the president, the captain and Helmet. MegaMaid is destroyed but the head is still intact and it falls on the planet (well, a planet, and as expected two apes on horses see them, I say as expected because that head immediately makes you think of the planet of the apes, and when you see the beach it’s even more obvious, so the two apes ‘have’ to appear: they see Spaceballs coming out of the head and they are not happy at all about it, saying something about the Spaceballs going to ruin their planet or something)
Pizza-the-Hutt is now dead because it ate itself, so LS has no more debts. He brings Vespa back to her father so she can again marry Valium (...). After a stop at a diner where an ‘alien’ comes out of a customer’s chest and starts an embarrassing Fred-Astaire’s-little-number before escaping out the window, LoneStarr refuses the money and goes away with Barf, but when Yogurt informs him that his necklace actually means that he’s a prince himself, he goes back to claim Vespa for himself (dressed in a prince-charming-outfit)
Vespa is very pleased about that and they get married very quickly because the priest was kind of losing his patience, and finally kiss.
Cast:
Lone Starr - Bill Pullman
Vespa - Daphne Zuniga
Barf - John Candy
Helmet - Rick Moranis
President - Mel Brooks
There’s also a small part for Michael Winslow and not surprising he does ‘noises’.
ITA balle spaziali
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