After having exhausted just about every film genre he could think of. Mel Brooks and his writing team turned their attention to the Star Wars series with very mixed results. The outcome is a combination of bad jokes, lots of jokes about men's crotches and even more jokes about women's breasts, and this was clearly a film aimed at the adolescent Star Wars adolescent.
As was the way with Brook's recent films at the time he wrote a substantial part in the film for himself, in this case two parts as he drifted between the role of President Skroob, (get it) and the Yoda character in this case named Yogurt, (ha ha). The rest of the main cast is as dull as dishwater. Bill Pullman is "Lone Star" the Han Solo character, John Candy is "Mog," the Chewbacca character and Daphne Zuniga is stuck with the Princess Lela character who unfortunately has to put up with a lot of jokes about being a Drudish princess (get it again). And so it goes. I guess it's okay for Brooks to do the ethnic Jewish humor jokes.
The film is also loaded with a bunch of sight gags which are mostly not funny although you occasionally get a few gems. Brooks and his writing team have stuck fairly closely to the plot line of the Star Wars films with some nods to Star Trek and Planet of the Apes. The humor is not of the sophisticated Ernest Lubitsch caliber and the whole movie probably plays best for gross 13 year old boys. Since that is what Brooks seems to be at times.
The film was written by Mel Brooks, Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan. Spaceballs is now considered a cult film but you can be sure this writer didn't vote for it. The running time is 96 minutes.
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