Classic Movie Review: Spaceballs (1987)

Mel Brooks is undeniably the king of parody and his science fiction spoof is definitely his best. In it, he makes fun of everything from Stars Wars and Alien to Planet of the Apes and The Wizard of Oz. This was the first comedy I remember seeing and after all these years, the fourth wall breaking and excellent comedic performances still make me laugh.

Planet Spaceball is facing a crisis from the lack of available oxygen and President Skroob (Mel Brooks) has sent the evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) to kidnap Druish Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga). His plan is to hold her hostage and get the ransom of Druidia's clean air supply. King Roland (Dick Van Patten) enlists the rogue Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) to rescue her and save the day. It's actually a very simple plot that even Dark Helmet thinks doesn't really need further explanation.

The lead for me with this movie is more the fact that it breaks the fourth wall so regularly rather than the actual parody element of it. There are constant references to the fact that they know they are in a movie, such as when the bad guys get the videotape of Spaceballs to find out where Lone Starr is or the accidental maiming of a crew member during the final "lightsaber" battle (they use rings). That's not to say that the references aren't funny at all, but in true Mel Brooks style, there's a lot of them. Being a Star Wars parody, the majority of the story revolves around desert planets and huge spaceships and even the Schwartz, it even has specific shots straight out of Star Wars (I mean A New Hope but I'm not going to call it that), but the movie also references so many others and not just sci-fi stuff. Brooks' own Jewish heritage is made fun of more here than in any of his other movies, and while they may have been funny 29 years ago, today only about half of them hit.

The movie's cast is undoubtedly made up of some of the funniest performers of the time. John Candy, Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks are all just fantastic comedy actors and they are just a joy to watch. Especially Brooks as he has the dual role of Skroob and Yogurt (no prizes for guessing who that's a parody of). Long before Bill Pullman was giving famous speeches on the Fourth of July, he was hilarious as a idiotic Han Solo and he really has great comedic chemistry with the legend that was John Candy, but then again Candy worked well with everyone. There are also three cameos that are unforgettable. Dom DeLuise was a veteran of TV and film and was well known for working with Burt Reynolds in many of his movies, but here he lends his voice to the terrific character of Pizza the Hutt. King of sound effects Michael Winslow returns with his magic voice and John Hurt reprises his role from Alien only to be killed all over again.

Spaceballs won't be winning any competitions for it's greatness, but it is a hilarious movie. It's script even led George Lucas to lend a hand with some of the special effects. Don't let his involvement turn you off though, this was before he'd made any bad decisions with his career. Aside from that, it's a great movie to go back and revisit like I did or look at for the first time if you are a fan of sci-fi because there's just so much to look out for.

Independence Day: Resurgence

The original Independence Day is one of those movies that every action movie fan holds in high regard. But a lot of the charm and excitement of that movie is severely lacking in this reboot, with only the crazy destruction remaining. Is that enough to make this movie great? Not when you're dealing with the legacy of the original movie.

Twenty years after the world united against the alien invasion, David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) is in charge of alien research at Area 51 in Nevada. As the world is starting to prepare for the anniversary of the invasion, a spherical alien ship appears near the moon's space defence station. A decision is made by the global council to shoot it down in case of it being another invasion attempt. But it ends up not being a real threat at all and a bigger one is on its way. An alien harvester ship with a queen on it lands across the Atlantic Ocean (as in it's the size of it) and its up to a small team of pilots led by Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) and Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher).

This movie really doesn't offer much past the action. There is no real tension or high stakes. Yes there is a countdown that the good guys have to go up against to win, but there's no underdog story that was present in the original. Where the humans were going against the aliens with our old technology, in Resurgence, they are fighting with alien technology. So there's no real tension in two equally matched enemies fighting one another with no exciting underdog story to speak of. There is the introduction of the alien queen, but she is so similar to the queen from Aliens, it's unbelievable. At least she's a different colour.

What's really disappointing is that none of the characters stick out in a distinct way. In the original, you had the diverse personalities of Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid and Jeff Goldblum. While both Goldblum and Pullman both return, they are a shadow of their former selves. Even Goldblum, who is known for his eccentric performances, actually gives the first normal performance of his life. None of the new actors offer anything special either. Liam Hemsworth is normally good in an action flick, but it feels like he's relegated to the background. Jessie T. Usher, playing Will Smith's son is equally boring. Travis Tope plays Liam's pilot partner and I was just waiting for him to be killed off, which he isn't. As for the leading ladies of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Maika Monroe, they're both fantastic performers and don't belong in this movie. As for Nicolas Wright (or American John Oliver, you'll know what I'm talking about), his character just baffled me.

All told, Resurgence occupies a weird limbo in the exact centre of the triangle made up of action, sci-fi and 20th anniversary reboot. It's not good enough for everyone to go crazy about, but it's not terrible enough to hate. It just is.

The Equaliser

This review was written by our new recruit Saul, who is going to start writing for us every so often. - Jack

In recent years, Denzel Washington has established and slowly disintegrated his status as a badass action star in films like Man on Fire. And with director Antoine Fuqua, the pair have attempted to recapture the magic of the Academy Award-winning Training Day. Spoiler alert, they haven't. What they have done is create a solid, slow-paced action-thriller that gets progressively more random and inevitably settles down in mediocrity.

The Equaliser follows Robert McCall, a quiet, private and apparently ex-military middle-aged man working in a hardware warehouse store. Much of the first half of the film is spent following him through his daily routines, his work and his friendships there (specifically Ralphie, who Robert is helping to become a security guard), and a local coffee shop where he visits nightly to read and talk to under-age prostitute Teri (Moretz). McCall loves to help people out, and this eventually evolves from helping train Ralphie and encouraging Teri, to murdering her pimp and taking on an international criminal organisation.

The way in which The Equaliser implodes is indicative of a lack of concrete and original ideas, as though several pages of the script went missing and the director attempted to improvise in the missing parts. There is obvious vision for how the beginning will work, and how he becomes a hero for hire, but as the Second Act looms and the plot thickens, ridiculousness seeps in to worrying degrees, slowly consuming the film from the inside out, leading into an ending nearly fully detached from the first half. The positives of this film are, without a doubt, the establishment of McCall and his primary nemesis, Teddy/Nikolai, played by Marton Csoskas. Most of this is accomplished solidly without being too overt, there's little-to-no explicit mention of McCall's military service in the first half, but it's also glaringly obvious, mostly through Washington's commendable characterisation. And Russian enforcer Teddy is introduced as an enigmatic, intelligent, cold and dominant figure in the wake of the first action sequence, and during the second act explodes into violent acts that are not unlike Ryan Gosling's Driver character from Drive, cutting a fearsome path through his early scenes.

However, the film falls apart in so many ways that it beggars belief. Characters appear and disappear with little-to-no explanation or introduction, Chloe Grace Moretz's Teri literally vanishes after the first action scene, rendering any and all setup for her to be the Jodie Foster to McCall's Travis Bickle instantly null and void. Whatever good that began with McCall and Teddy's characters soon evolves into a pissing contest for emotionlessness, which even the movie explicitly mentions at one point. Character motivations and relations feel random and convenient, McCall is both invincible and omnipotent, and aside from brief moments in the climax, there is literally zero threat to McCall throughout the film. He nonchalantly dispatches henchmen with such amusing ease that rarely is it even shown onscreen for fear of boring the audience. And it's almost painfully nostalgic how the primary goons are tattoo-covered, muscly Russians with skull fetishes, perhaps indicative of a re-emerging trend in action films.. And on the technical side, the score and direction are so painfully "middle-of-the-road 2000's action" that, save for one GORGEOUS dissolve emphasising Teddy's dominance over the city of Boston, they hardly deserve a mention.

All in all, this is the cinematic equivalent of slowly watching a ball of yarn roll around the floor and untangle itself, eventually revealing itself as an assemblage of mediocrity, with brief, seemingly accidental moments of brilliance and beauty. Unfortunately, ridiculousness, and lack of emotion and motivation ruin a movie that had the potential to be much more than a good film gone bad. Wait for the DVD release.