Sir? What is it? Can I talk to my aunt lewis,
Well, you don't need that, Private. We're right
here. Now what is it? Now what
is it? I'm having trouble with the radar, sir. What's wrong with it? I've lost
the bleeps, I've lost the sweeps and I've lost the creeps. The what? The what
and the what? You know, the bleeps,
the sweeps and the
creeps. That's not all he's lost,
sir. The radar, sir. It appears to be jammed.
Jammed.
Raspberry.
There's only one man who would dare. Give me the
raspberry. Lone Star.
It's two Dads one Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged dads
sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nick Brianna.
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of 2 Dads
1 Movie. I'm Steve. I'm Nick. And today we are going to talk about Mel
Brooks's classic sci fi parody satire spoof
movie, Spaceballs from 1987. One of my.
Honestly, one of my favorite movies of all time. Easily like
a top 10 comedy for me. But Nick, this was new for you, right?
Yeah, I'd never seen it before and I wasn't sure how
it would go. Sometimes you see something that you kind of miss the boat on
and sometimes it just doesn't click at all. Sometimes it clicks
in a way where you say, okay, at the age that I should have watched
this, I would have really liked it. Right? And sometimes you just realize,
oh, there's a reason why everybody likes this. This is very funny
and very good. And it was definitely the latter for me. I really enjoyed it.
Really excited to talk about this one. Very cool. Let's run down some facts on
Spaceballs real quick. Released on June 24,
1987 with a running time of 96 minutes.
Directed by the great Mel Brooks. Written by Brooks along with his writing partners
Thomas Meehan and Ronnie Graham. Starring Bill Pullman, John Candy
and Rick Moranis. Although also with a ton of other people who you'll recognize as
we go through it. Here we go. This is what I love. The scores only
a 52% on rotten tomatoes. So not fresh. Very rotten.
Or not very rotten, but rotten for sure. However, IMDb when the people speak,
a 7.1. A well earned over 7 from IMDb
for Spaceballs. It won an award. Oh, the 1987
Stinker Awards. No. Gave Spaceball's worst picture
of the year. I'd like to look at their track record. It's ridiculous. I've never
even heard of the Stinkers. It's like, it must have been like a Pre Razzies,
I guess. But, yeah, that's apparently thing. It was not a box office
success. It would cost about $22 million to make, which is kind of amazing,
about 1987 and over $20 million. But with special effects and everything you do,
it got expensive and it earned about 30. A little over 38 million at
the box office. So only about one and a half times its money. And so
that would definitely be considered, if not a flop, a disappointment as
far as the box office goes. But that's okay because this isn't the kind of
movie that necessarily, you know, needed to be a theatrical
hit. This is a movie that I am confident Mel Brooks has more than made
money on over the years on home video sales, DVDs, and streaming and
all kinds of stuff, because it's fantastic. So I guess let's just jump into it,
like. Yeah, Actually, before we start, I do. I do have a question because,
and I should know this as a guy with a movie podcast,
the way that the Rotten Tomatoes score functions is
that an average of critics giving it a score of 1 to 10, or it's
either them either saying, yes, it's good. No, it's not bad. Yeah, so it's a
combination. It's basically like whatever a given critic does for their own scale,
it kind of looks at like 60% as like the barrier. So if you do
a one out of five movies that you give a three, four, or five to
will get fresh. And movies you give a two or a one to will get
rotten. If you're Siskel and Ebert, thumbs up, thumbs down, then that's the fresh
or rotten. Okay, if you're a 1 out of 10, you got to give at
least a 6 to it to get it fresh. If you give, you know,
five or lower to it, it'll get rotten. And then the average of all those
added up, you know, average together to a percentage.
60% is that bar. So anything that gets a 60% or higher is
considered fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and anything at 59% or below is rotten. Okay,
so anything in the 50s, you know, you're still saying, you know,
basically on average, it was a little better than half
liked, I guess. You know, but that's sort of rotten Tomato scale.
And it is based on critic reviews, and they do have some
kind of a vetting process where it's, you know, it is not anybody with Like
a comment, you know, commenting on Facebook. But I think if you have like a
reasonably established blog or something, you'll get, you can get included and it will update
over time. It's majority of it is from the time it came out because that's
generally when most of the professional reviews would have been written by it. But if
somebody goes in and writes, you know, a professional review, looking back at a movie,
you know, 25, 30 years later, I do believe that will factor into Rotten Tomatoes
sort of critics score, and then I think it works similarly. They do a fan
score. I don't include it when we talk about the facts. I like the IMDb
number for a general sort of fan pulse. Yeah. But Rotten
Tomatoes does do this like popcorn score where it's like the same kind of idea,
but it's more about people leaving ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, you know,
the general public sort of doing it. Okay, but to me, that's like a little
bit of a less interesting metric. I like Rotten Tomatoes as sort of like,
well, this is what the critics think. And then I like using IMDb to sort
of look at. Well, this is what the people think. Yeah. And for a lot
of the movies we've done, there's been disparity, you know, it's not really lined up.
Yeah. And I guess now kind of understanding the way it works, it makes sense
that you could end up with a 55% rotten tomatoes score and
a 7 point something IMDb if it's a movie where the people who didn't like
it would give it a 4 out of 10, but the people who liked it
would give it a nine out of ten. Right, Right. So it would. It would
skew up that way. And IMDb is also. That's like a living sc. That is,
people continue to leave ratings on movies on IMDb and it is an average over
time. So that will move. You know, that's a snapshot, Right. You know, I looked
it up earlier this week. Technically that was the score. Then in a month it
might be different. I don't know. I don't know. We need a stock ticker in
the 2 Dads 1 Movie offices here at the penthouse
floor of our skyscraper that we've just built. We need that stock ticker with live
IMDb scores for the movie we're talking. About here in our Million Dollar Studio.
All right, well, sorry for the diversion, but I. It helps me
to kind of re. Understand and that was a great explanation of the way these
scoring systems work. Well, thank you, sir. Cool. All right, so this Movie obviously,
is at its heart, a spoof of Star Wars. They reference lots of other sci
fi movies as well, and it definitely kind of, you know, goes around the genre
a bit. But the majority of this movie is about Star wars and spoofing Star
wars and the characters are sort of based off that. So of course, we begin
with a very Star wars thing, which is the crawl of text. And I
have to admit, there is a joke in that first moment that I did
not get until this watch through. I have seen this movie over 40 times,
and there was an element to the joke that I didn't get until this time.
So as the movie scrolls up, it says, like Spaceballs and It says chapter
11. And the part of that joke I've always understood is that when you first
watch Star wars, if you were in 1977, you're watching it, it would have rolled
up and said, Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hope. Which is like, how weird.
They're starting in the middle of the story, right? And now this is
not quite as funny in that way now because we've had so many Star wars
movies and TV shows and we all kind of understand that concept. And there is
an Episode one and whatever. I totally didn't catch the joke about Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Yeah, yeah, I noticed that it said that they were squandering all their resources and
everything that was good, that the scrolling text had
a few bangers in it. And this is why I appreciated this movie so
much, is they fit anywhere they could find a joke unbeknownst to
the princess. But notes to us, it's just so good. Oh, beautiful.
That's what most of my notes are, just jokes that I liked the
classic Mel. As sort of a bit of an aficionado of Mel Brooks as I
am, my father is a huge fan of Mel Brooks and so he raised me
that way. That's the kind of joke Brooks really, really nails
is taking turns of phrase that exist in English
language and in American society and making them ridiculous and turning them into the absurd
version. So, like, unbelievable. Unbeknownst is a word. He's basically
probably the first person to ever make the joke that you can't be whelmed,
Right? You can be overwhelmed or underwhelmed. That's a Mel Brooks joke for sure,
right? Is that you can't be whelmed. And so, yeah, known to us is brilliant.
So, yeah, so the Kraal goes, gives us our basic plot, which, you know,
look, it's not a complicated plot. Basically, the people of planet
Spaceball have squandered their resources. They have no air left. Or are they running out
of air? And their neighboring planet, they don't really say how far away they are.
A neighboring planet, Druidia, has thousands of years still
of fresh air because they're, I guess, not insane, and they're able to maintain it.
They also somehow have some kind of an airlock system around the entire planet.
Comes into play later. But the people of Spaceball, Planet Spaceball,
want that air, and they are willing to kidnap the
King of Druidia's daughter. So King Roland of Druidia
has a daughter named Vespa, and she is going to get married. And the Spaceball's
plan is when she leaves on her honeymoon, they're gonna kidnap her, hold her ransom,
and steal all the air from Planet Druidia. That's your plot. That's the setup.
That's all the information you need to know. That's it. So if I take you
back to 1977 for a second, for 10 years before this movie came out,
the opening sequence of Star wars, the original New Hope,
whatever, Episode four is Princess Leia's cruiser
flying and then getting shot at. And then the Star Destroyer kind
of comes across the camera, the shot of the camera, and it's an
enormous ship. So it takes, I don't know, probably seven or eight, maybe 10 seconds
to actually pass by the camera. I love the scene in this one.
I timed it. Do you know how long? No, how long was it? How long
it takes 96 seconds, a minute and a half for
Spaceball 1 to pass completely by the camera at the beginning of this movie.
The patience to put that in, just knowing it's going to
pay off. Because the experience of watching that is. Okay, this is funny.
Oh, this is funny. It's kind of longer than normal. What the hell's
going on here? I really hope this pays off. Oh, this is funny again.
He's really going for it. And I loved it. I loved it. If you ever
needed proof that Seth MacFarlane grew up a Mel Brooks fan,
that's it right there. Because Seth MacFarlane exactly is
the king of the joke that goes too long but then is funny because it's
gone so long, it's now back to being funny. And Mel Brooks,
obviously, you know, was big on that as well. So this is the movie,
like you said, it's sort of just chock full of gags and jokes and little
bits. And I, too, like my write down here. My notes are a lot of
just kind of commenting on the jokes that worked or were funny or still made
me laugh. I think for me, in this watch through, it was particularly about what
still makes me laugh. What after I've seen it a hundred times, or not 100,
but a lot, what still makes me laugh. And early on, one of the first
things that happens is that. So we've come to Spaceball 1. They are traveling to
Druidia because they're going to kidnap the princess. And we get to the bridge where
you come inside, and they're being told. One of the radar people or something says
to Colonel Sanders, who's sort of the second in command, or maybe I guess he's
the captain of the ship, but, you know, oh, sir, Planet Druidia's in sight.
You want to let me know? Okay, great. Let Dark Helmet know. Right. So this
is Rick Moranis. He's the Darth Vader character with this incredibly enormous
helmet with a kind of Vader like mask,
but that slides up so he's able to talk to us and we're able to
see it's Rick Moranis. It's a good gag. But he goes to call President Scroob,
who's kind of their emperor character, right. And he puts the little
phone, or whatever the little walkie talkie thing is, to the outside of his helmet,
like, up against his head. And it's just this moment of, like,
ridiculousness that I think is hilarious. And, you know, we move on from it very
quickly because. And you can see. And you can see his face and his ears
and his head. He could easily have put it inside. No, no, all the way
on the outside of the helmet. They do love playing up that helmet.
Yes. It's a nice prop throughout the movie.
President Scroob, I really enjoy his mustache. It's just a really funny
mustache. It's again, one of those things behind the scenes. You could picture him saying,
no, thinner, curlier, smaller, closer to my nostrils.
Until they got the perfect amount of funny mustache. Yeah. That character
is also just so very much, in some ways, very much like Governor
Lapidimane from Blazing Saddles. And he's sort of like Mel Brooks taking that character
into space. And I feel like that mustache was a snidely whiplash sort of
reference. I mean, Lapida May did not have a mustache in
that movie, but. But it felt very similar. It felt very like, you know,
one informed the other sort of thing. Yeah. This movie is pg in
retrospect. I have thought for years that I'm kind of. I'm surprised that at
its PG ness. And I think if we're released today, it would be PG13.
I think it's pretty easy. And one of the main reasons is language. There's just
a lot of kind of foul language in the movie. We get our first utterance
of the word shit at 5 minutes and 20 seconds into the movie. And I
counted a total throughout the film eight times that movie, that word is said in
the movie, including five times in the first half hour. So if you are going
to let your kids watch, just, you know, be aware like that's, that's coming for
you. Yeah, you know, that's definitely part of it. I just thought it was funny
in a PG movie to be able to count, you know, eight utterances of the
of shit is kind of surprising for a pg. That used to be kind of
the delineation is a PG movie could say ass and hell
and damn, but it couldn't say shit. Maybe one. Yeah. And this was
after the PG13 rating already existed. Yeah, the PG13 rating
existed at this point. Yes. And so yeah, it just, I think because there's
no nudity, there's no violence to speak. I mean there's like laser blasts,
but there's no real. There's no blood, there's no gore, there's nothing like that.
Apparently it was just determined that like that's not that bad to have just the
bad language. Whatever. They have one very well placed fuck at the end of the
movie, which I think is super. I appreciate that. But yeah, it seems like today
those would all be the markers of like, yeah, you're PG13, not R.
You say that F word one more time. Now we have to give you an
R rating. Yeah, yeah. Which would have been ridiculous. This is clearly not an R
rated movie. But. But yeah, the fact that it didn't garner the PG13 is very
surprising. Dark Helmet's way of punishing
his subordinates is very funny where he does kind of the,
the Darth Vader choke thing, except it's targeted at the testicles
or testicle representation of the person he's going after. So there are
a lot of funny scenes throughout the movie. Every time he get upset, everybody puts
both hands over their nuts. And it really reminds me of being around any kind
of little kid that's horsing around with you or having a cat or anything.
You just gotta get a stay, keep your nuts on a swivel.
Yeah. Early in this movie,
one of my favorite characters of the 1980s shows up
in this and that's the radar guy who's there making
all of his radar sounds. And this is Michael Winslow, who we know from the
Police Academy movies and so many other things. A national treasure. A genius
with the sound effects. And I don't know if you've ever heard him do that
Led Zeppelin whole lot of love. Oh, my God, that's incredible. He.
I wrote down here that Michael Winslow in the 80s was kind of like a
lefty one out guy. Okay. Just one of those specialty relievers that, you know.
He's going to go in, he's going to deliver two thirds of an inning and
he's going to carry the time that Michael Winslow is on the screen in this
movie. He's doing everything. Yeah. So it's nice that you bring
somebody in there kind of for a guest spot. He just does his thing and
you don't hear from him again. But he really serves his purpose there. So I
like seeing a little Winslow. Yeah, they let him cook for sure. And when he
calls Sanders and Helmut over to talk about the radar and
how he lost the beeps, the sweeps and the creeps when he takes
the microphone, the thing away from his mouth and still,
he's still doing that really good. And dark helmet just kind
of throws himself over the desk and just unplugs things. It's like,
stop it. He's so frustrated. He could not be so beside
himself with frustration is a super classic moment. Oh, the other thing
I want to point out early is Lone Star, the Bill Pullman character,
every other character has a similarity to a Star wars
character. And then the Bill Pullman character, who's kind of supposed to be a Han
Solo Luke Skywalker hybrid, is just dressed like Indiana
Jones. And that's. It's just a really funny way
to do it where it's just, okay, this is Harrison Ford, right? Exactly. This is
generically Harrison Ford with a tiny bit of Luke Skywalker sprinkled in. Just to.
Just because it's Star wars and somebody has to use the Force on the good
side. But yeah, no, you're right. He's got the khaki pants and the leather bomber
jacket and he looks very much like a hatless Indiana Jones.
Very much. And so the first time we see him, we see him and his
compatriot Barf, played by John Candy, who's clearly sort of the Chewbacca character.
Originally Brooks wanted to cast Candy in the role,
but also wanted to do more of a mask like Chewbacca, more of a
come up. And the studio actually pushed back on him and said, no, no,
if you're gonna put John Candy in this movie in 1987, we have to see
John Candy. Like, we can't. You can't hide him behind a mask, like, whatever.
And so I think they really, really did a great job. They've got this,
like, tail that's clearly, like, somehow, like, robotic or mechanical that wags
everywhere. He's got these ears that do little perky things and kind of, you know,
like a dog's ears. And they'll perk up or they'll. They'll cower a little bit,
whatever. And then some simple makeup. And it really got the point across that he's
a mog, a half man, half dog. But we get to see John Candy.
And he's just John Candy. He really is. He's just same inflection,
same voice as the every other John Candy character. Yeah, I did
really like that. It would have hurt the movie if they covered his face up.
Same with. If you had dark helmet operate behind the
helmet the entire time. It's funnier seeing Rick Moranis's face.
Well, there's a couple of great gags with the mask, right? So one, when he
first arrives, you know, backing up just a bit, dark helmet first comes on the
Bridge of Spaceball 1. And he's, you know, it's that breathing noise.
Yeah. Like Darth Vader. But then you realize he's sort of struggling,
and he has to, like, throw the mask up. He's like, I can't breathe in
this thing. It's just a very funny moment. And then later on, and I don't
remember exactly how far, but later in the movie, he's drinking a cup of coffee
through the little holes, the little breathing holes on
his mask, which. His face is 2 or 3 inches away from that thing,
and yet he's. Little sipping noises, you know, through the. Just great little gags using
the mask. But, yeah, the little choices like that, that really helped
drive forward that this is a com. Obviously, it's a comedy starring
very funny people. And at the height of sort of
their comedy. Right. I mean, Rick Moranis and John Candy in the mid late 80s,
this was. This was their time. Absolutely. And they were both wonderful in this.
And I think there is an understanding of what you're
doing that is required of making a spoof. And you obviously
can't take yourself too seriously, but you also have to, like, give respect to the
source material. And I feel like letting Candy and Moranis cook in the
way that they did is exactly that. And really is made making it so
that, you know, the. The source material is shown with respect.
But then let these guys just be wild and be crazy and do
their thing. And it's. And it's. It's very funny. Yeah, Yeah. I. I think
everyone was really great in this. They rescued the princess.
They. They got Princess Vespa and her sidekick, who is the C3PO
look like, named Dot Matrix. Right. Good name. Voiced by
Joan Rivers. Good choice. Joan Rivers is great. Hold on a second. Yeah,
something on that. So there. Joan Rivers was not. I mean, shouldn't be a surprise.
I think Joan Rivers was not in the costume. She was not. She did not
wear the Dot Matrix costume during filming. A woman. I do not remember her name
now. I apologize. She's a professional mime. Was actually the one in it. And she
also did the voice initially for Dot Matrix, which I found surprising to
learn because I felt like the look of the Dot Matrix head was
kind of Joan Rivers inspired. Yeah, but it wasn't. Mel Brooks
brought Joan Rivers in in post production after he realized he just did not care
for the performance of the woman who init voiced Matrix. And so he thought,
well, who. Who else? I mean, you could have brought in Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers
or Phyllis Diller, I feel like those have been the two appropriate women at that
point. Right. Age. Right. Right. Hilariousness, you know, at that time to
do that. And, you know, yes, we brought in Joan Rivers well after the fact,
which I thought was an interesting little bit. I want to back us up in
the movie just a second, because before they get rescued, Will Lonestar
and Barf have to be told about it. Right? And so they are contacted by
King Roland, played by Dick Van Patten, and are told about this. They go,
and she's under attack by Spaceballs. And they're both just like, nope, we're not doing
it. Spaceballs. No, I'm out. Too dangerous. Right. Well, I'll give you anything I want,
you know, Anything you want. And they asked for a million space bucks because they
owe money to notorious gangster Pizza the Hut,
who is the grossest, just disgusting thing
voiced by Dom DeLuise, a longtime Mel Brooks collaborator.
He says they owe him a hundred thousand space bucks. And he goes, oh,
no, no, it's. You forgot late charges. It's a million. Yeah, it's like, what kind
of vig is that where you're getting a million? But anyway, they need a
million space bucks. King Roland offers them the million to go save Princess Vespa,
and if at all possible, try to save the car. But yeah. So they go
and they kind of pull them out of the tractor beam situation and.
Yeah, that's how. That is how our princess and our
Lone Star, our captain, meet each other in this rescue
scenario. Right. This movie came out, I think maybe the same year, right around
the same time as Weird Science. Sounds about right. Yeah. And there's a scene in
Weird Science where the brother character, Chet gets turned into some kind of.
I don't know if it's a big pile of shit. Big pile of. Right.
And it's disgusting and there's oozing and all that. And I would like to
side by side that with Pizza the Hut because I thought that was the grossest
practical effects I'd seen in the 80s. But I think Pizza the Hut just
with the continual flow of cheese, kind of garlic cream sauce, I mean,
you got to go. Marinara pepperonis are like falling off terrible.
And then his little. His little metallic henchman Vinnie goes like. Starts eating
pieces of him. And it's like a Mafia Max Headroom. Robot type
character, essentially. When Lone Star, or when Barf goes
to rescue the princess, when the ships link up, when he goes to
her ship, they're just loose in space. Right. Every time it shows up
in space, I like that and that they don't address why they can breathe
or anything. And the whole point of the movie is that there's no air on
this planet, but everyone's just fine just out in space. I like to thank my
headcanon for that. I don't know this for sure is just that they. Mel Brooks
and the writers and whoever he had with production design got together and they were
looking like, well, how do we do this? We want to make it, like,
obvious that they're walking between the things, but they're going to need, like an airlock
or a tunnel or whatever. And they just couldn't figure out, you know, how to
make it look good and how to, like, do it on the. And so he's
like, fuck it, just whatever. It's a ladder. And they just are like, just move
on. Just move on. Funny choice. Funny choice. During their escape, they end
up. They're having trouble with their craft, which is a flying Winnebago,
basically a Breaking Bad shape style.
And they have to crash land on this desert planet.
When they end up walking through the desert, Lone Star says, okay,
everybody, just take it. Only what you need to survive. And of course, it cuts
to the great scene of them lugging all of the princesses matching luggage.
And it's good to see John Candy pulling a big trunk,
a big steamer trunk, because it reminds me of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I think
he had a trunk clause. He had to pull a trunk around in every movie.
Pretty sure Uncle Buck's got a trunk scene, so I'm gonna check on that probably.
Yeah. And they find out that this giant heavy trunk that they've been
dragging through the desert has a giant hair dryer inside of
it. And that's what they've been carrying around. Good gag.
And before they even crash land, they have to get away From Space Bowl 1,
right. Because they've done this rescue. The tractor beam is still pulling the Mercedes in,
but they're not there. They've jammed the radar so they can't be seen, but they
have to get away now. And so they go into hyperactive, right?
Which is sort of like light speed. So they go off in order to chase
them. Dark Helmet is not satisfied with light
speed or whatever. Hyperactive or anything. Light speed's too slow. Light speed's too slow.
Yeah, you gotta go all the way past ridiculous speed to ludicrous
speed. And this is one of my favorite gags in the movie is, is Colonel
Sanders starts calling out all the things that need to be like, you know,
strapped down or closed, or he's like, you know, close the Three Ring Circus.
Close all the shops in the mall, like, you know, whatever. Secure the animals in
the zoo, like all the different stuff that's on this ship. Right. Dark Helmet won't
even sit down. He's just going to be like, no, like crisp speed, go.
Right. So, of course, you know, not that it works like this because space
is a vacuum and etc. We're not going to get into it. But it's like
momentum is keeping him, you know, almost airborne as he's holding on to something.
And I love this moment because they end up stopping the ship with an emergency
brake. And that, of course. And it says, do not use. Yes, do not use.
And he flies forward and crashes into. The helmet's all dented and stuff.
Stuff. And this moment where he. He gets up and they kind of help him
up. Oh, you know, sir, are you okay? He goes, yeah. He sounds exactly like
Lewis Tully from Ghost. Yes. I was thinking that the broken glasses. The broken glasses.
The sort of higher pitched voice like, oh, we stop yet? Oh,
okay, good. Like it's very Louis Tully. Yeah, super hilarious. I don't know if
he was deliberately sort of pulling that out, but it, but it certainly worked.
But now the. Now the Spaceballs have to find Them. Right. So they crash landed
on a desert planet, and the Spaceballs need to figure out where they
go. They actually zoo zoomed past them, we're told, because ludicrous speed
is so much faster than light speed. And so Colonel Sanders has this
great idea. Well, let's check the tape of Spaceballs the movie.
And Dark Helmet points out, rightfully, we're still making the movie.
How is there already? Oh, there's instant cassettes. Now, first of all, I love the
idea that in this, you know, galaxy far, far away, and it's like the future
or whatever, VHS is still, you know, the name of the game. Light speed and
vhs. So those are two things. Perfect. Exactly. And so they do find.
This is great, too. They go to Mr. Rental. Yep. Because there was a Mr.
Coffee and there was a Mr. Radar before, and now they go to Mr.
Rental. And the top two rows of things are all Mel Brooks movies. Literally in,
like, chronological order, you know, like Silent Movie, the Producers. Everything's there,
you know, Blazing Saddles and whatnot. And they're looking. And of course, the last one
is Spaceballs because that would have been the newest he made. But did you see
what was below those two? No. So there's a. There's a big row. There's actually
multiple more rows of VHS tapes, but they're turned to the side. You're just seeing
the spawn instead of. Instead of the COVID But it's one side is rocky
one through 14, and the other one is Friday the 13th
one through 14. Now, they were a little over on
the guess on how many Rockies would be made. Yeah. But there have been 12
Friday the 13th movies. Wow. Overall. So they were not that far off.
Mel Brooks had a pretty good idea. That's actually the first of two. There are
too many Rockies. Rocky movies. Jokes in this movie.
Oh, yeah. I wrote down the other one. That comes later. Okay. I didn't notice
that. Yeah, they actually. They actually got close to that. The. To the number of
Friday the 13th. So they do. They zoom ahead in the tape.
They're able to find the scene that is happening right now,
which is a funny little gag where they're like making motions and they're seeing themselves
on, you know, a sequential depth of monitors.
Right. It's like a camera picture inside a picture inside a picture. Yeah. Looking like.
Like the special effects on the Haunted Mansion or something. But then they find our
heroes and. And that they're on this desert planet, which they're walking through the desert
dragging the princess's matched luggage. Where the
hell Are they going? They don't make any notion of like,
oh, there's like we saw a city as we were crash landing. Like they're
just walking. No reason they're going the direction they're going. None whatsoever. It makes no
sense. There's no destination in mind. I cannot imagine what they actually thought,
how that was going to work. Where were they going? Yeah,
they. This, I think this is my, my favorite joke
in the movie. And I think this is kind of the perfect Mel Brooks style
joke. So when they're looking for them in the desert and he orders them,
comb the desert. Yeah. President Scrub, right, Says, comb the desert. President Scroob,
comb the desert. And the next scene is just the men
dragging a giant comb through a desert. Perfect visual gag. So that's
where I feel like the joke would have ended in a Naked Gun Zucker
type movie. Just a quick hit. And then they take it
the next level where the guy's looking through the binoculars at the combing and he
says, are we being too literal? Which is another great fourth wall
type Mel Brooks. And then they're going to check in on all the
different comb crews that are there. What have you found? What have you found?
So it's, you know, all these standard kind of back pocket combs. And then
the last thing, which was the afro pick rain drag through the desert.
And then all the black soldiers there were like responding.
And that, that's kind of of its time. But that is the Mel
Brooks perfect joke where he's got, he's got the pun,
he's got the thing that's self referential to this as being a movie or referencing
the own script. And then a little bit of racial stuff, which was really
well executed and very funny. Yes. And it's a good example of the rule of
three, Right. You've got the first gag and then the reiteration of the gag and
then the punchline is really the third version of the gag. That is actually not
my favorite joke in that scene, though. My favorite joke in that scene is when
Sanders asks Helmut, are we being too literal? He has a bullhorn
in his hand and he turns to Colonel Sanders directly front of him using the
bullhorn, it says, no, you idiot, we were told to comb the desert, so we're
combing it. And then when he goes to ask the soldiers, who are, who are,
you know, hundreds of feet away, what's going on? He puts the bullhorn down,
puts his hand up to his mouth and goes, have you found anything yet?
It's just such a Good gag. It's so funny every. That's one
of the things that makes me laugh every time I see the movie. And his
pith helmet. His, like, African explorer. Really funny.
The little door for the mask is such a great gag, too.
Yep. I'm gonna bring this up when we're summarizing it at the end, but I
just want to put a. Put a bookmark here. Is that dark helmets,
Desert Patrol vehicle. Yes. Is a VW thing
that is floating. So it's like a Volkswagen thing that's just floating through the desert.
So later on, I'm going to talk about how this movie had things in common
with each of the movies we've done so far. Okay. But I won't mention one
of the pieces because I think I know. Oh, we'll see. We'll get to it.
Well, we'll do it together when it gets there. Yeah. Comb the desert. Good scene.
And they. They just squeeze so much out of a premise.
And I really appreciate that. Rather than it being a bunch of mediocre jokes
and volume. They really get everything out of it. Yeah. The other one being
when President Scroob is supposed to be teleported. Right.
Beamed. I don't know if we've gotten to that yet, but we can talk.
It was a little earlier than this. Yeah. We can hit this part. Yeah.
Because I thought so President Scrub is supposed to be. Do you want to come
over here? We're going to beam you into this room. And they beam him over
there, and he steps in this thing that he's clearly uncomfortable with using in the
first place. And he gets in there and his head is on backwards. And they
say, okay, well, we're gonna beam you back and see if you get normal again.
And he's normal again. Okay. Should we beam you in again? No. And then he
just walks through an automatic open door into the next room where they all are.
So he was going, like, 18ft. So as a kid, I love this scene,
obviously. Cause it's like his butt. He scratches his butt. It's a very funny butt
scene. Right. Because his hands on backwards, like. But my problem was I never.
I know they say his head's on backwards, but I always thought, no, his butt
and his dick got replaced with each other. Because his hands
are still. Right. Right. Because he couldn't. It was just. It looks funny
when he goes to scratch his butt. It's like. So his hands got flipped and
turned around as well. Like, it's just part of the gag that kind of,
like, you got to Suspend disbelief for a minute. But it is a great gag.
Yeah. Like this. I'll walk, you know, like, I'm not gonna do this again.
And it's yet literally not next door. Like, he never needed to, like, leave.
That was also, I think, right. Right after that or right before that moment is
him being on the phone. Sounds like with a journalist or something. Maybe it's like,
oh, you can tell your viewers, you know, there's no air shortage whatsoever. I've heard
the same rumor. It's ridiculous. And he's got a. A drawer full of cans
of Perry the Perrier from, you know, says, like. Like, whatever. Fresh from
Druid. Druidia. And it's just. He just sucks it down through his nose, which is
just so fucking fun. I also love Ivan note
here. So going back to the desert, our heroes pass out,
basically. They can't go any further. You know, they're both.
Lonestar's carrying Princess Vespa and Barf is carrying Dot
Matrix. And they're both just done. And so they fall over, and it looks like
they're done for, but then along come these little sort of Jawa like,
characters. I've always called them the Dink Dinks. I don't know if that's what they're
actually called, but they just sit on Dink. Yeah, that's what I wrote. Like,
whatever, right? And they find them and they sort of give them water and revive
them a bit or whatever and take them to their leader, who is
the keeper of a greater magic, the keeper of the Schwartz.
His name is Yogurt. He's sort of the Yoda, but he's gold instead of
green. Because that's sort of funny, I guess, you know? But, yeah.
So we get to this temple, we meet Yogurt and his Dink Dink friends.
And I love that all the characters, all of our heroes
know about the Schwartz. They know about Yogurt. This is like a. This person
is a known quantity in the galaxy, I guess. Like, so they're not at all.
They're, like, impressed to meet him, but they're. But they get it right away,
right? There's no, like, hesitation. Like, or what? It's like, oh, my gosh, it's Yogurt.
Oh, the Schwartz. Oh, how exciting. And it's like, really?
But I love that. This is one of the greatest gags. I'm going to get
into the backstory on it. One of the greatest little mini scenes is. I think
it's John Candy asks him, so, Yogurt, what do you do here? One of them
asks, and he says merchandising, where the real
money for the movie is made. So this is great because this is. This scene
was directly inspired by the dealings that Brooks had with Lucas before this movie was
made and before they could make this movie. The studio needed Mel Brooks
to basically get kind of sign off from George Lucas that, like, he's not
going to sue them if they do this. Right. And so he, you know,
basically got in contact with Lucasfilm and was chatting about, like, hey, we want to
do this. And, yeah, it's going to be a spoof. It's going to be a
parody. You know, that's what I do. We're going to base it off Star wars
and have the character look like this. And he kind of explained to all the
Lone Star character, the barf, everything, dark helmet, all of it. And apparently
the. The word from Lucasfilm was like, yeah, that's great. Go do that. We have
one issue. Because you're basing these character designs so
closely on our characters, we don't think it would be fair for you to,
like, merchandise it. Like, you can't make action figures and stuff because it's sort of
like it's going to cannibalize our. Yeah. And so forth. If we're going to,
like, approve that, we're cool with this. No merchandising. So there really
wasn't. You could not buy, like, Spaceball's action figures. You could not buy, like,
trust me, I wanted them. Yeah. You couldn't get a toy set of. Of Eagle
5 or anything like that. This didn't exist. And so that then inspired Brooks to
write this scene where yogurt is going through all of the merchandise
being created for Spaceball. Spaceball's the T shirt. Spaceball's the lunchbox.
Spaceball's the flamethrower.
Kids love that one. Like, this is such a great little mini
scene in the movie. And then Spaceball's the doll and it's yogurt.
He's just so cute. But, yeah, it's a great. I love that there's like a
real world sort of explanation for that scene. No, that's good to know.
And way to turn that into one of the best parts of the movie,
because they really got a lot out of that running gag
throughout the movie. There'd be a Spaceballs. There was a placemat and a shaving cream
and all these things throughout the movie. And if you notice, only after that scene
occurs, they actually don't think any of them exist. But Then you see Spaceballs the
toilet paper, Spaceballs the bed sheets, whatever. All of that comes after we get
Yogurt's little explanation that this is, you know, where the real money
is made. So the heroes are
trying to get the princess out of jail.
She's been imprisoned. Oh, no, no. That's jumping Whip over.
Yeah, so they are. So they're at Yogurt's thing, and so they're trying to
get her back to Jidia, but, like, they can't. So Dark Helmet and Cardinal Sanders
find the door to Yogurt's lair and realize that that's where they are.
But he says, you know, we can't go in there because Yogurt's got the Schwartz.
And Colonel Sanders like, oh, do you have the Schwartz to your little ring?
He goes, I got the downside. There's an upside and downside every short. So,
you know, it's like he's more powerful. So they have to lure her out.
And this is one of my favorite things about the Schwartz is that it has
whatever powers are needed by the plot at the time. Apparently,
in addition to, like, zapping people's nuts and turning into lightsabers
and, you know, moving things across, you know,
space, like telekinesis, like all this stuff, it allows for some kind of shape shifting
or, or changeling or whatever it is, because Dark Helmet is able to make himself
look like King Roland and entice Princess Vespa to come out and
then, you know, basically kidnap her again. And so now they can take her back
to Planet Spaceball and. And put her in jail, but they do have
to sort of capture it. And then when Yogurt goes to, you know,
send alone Star and. And Barf off after them. Dot Matrix has captured Alone,
along with Princess Vespa. He gives them a fortune cookie.
He fills up their tank of gas and then gives them a fortune cookie.
Makes you open before you eat it because of course that comes back later,
but yeah. So now they have to go to Planet Spaceball and they have to
go rescue the princess from prison. Yeah, and they're one
of my favorite recurring tropes in any kind of movie
is the beat up two guys and steal their uniform scene. Yes.
Never gets old to me. I always enjoy it and especially when there's
a twist on it and they're definitely was here. So it was really funny to
see Barf and Lone Star go beat these guys up. Take their uniforms. They fit
perfectly. Including the tail hole. That's a hole for the tail.
Well, I mean, they were good. They did. The guards were a big guy and
a skinny guy. So they were smart about sort of giving us. Yeah,
okay. Like maybe he could fit into it. The tail does throw it off.
And then the guards show up later when they're escaping. They're in
a shootout. And these guys are in their underwear still with their helmets and their
helmets. Guns, their gloves and get. So do Lone Star clothes.
Really good. Really good. So before they arrive to rescue
her, she's not in the prison cell. She's actually in this kind of. I don't
know, it's a big room, some kind of control with a big wall. And this
is now time for Scroob and Dark Helmet to, you know, ransom her. Right.
And they contact King Roland, and they basically threaten
King Roland and they say, if you don't give us the combination to the airlock
around planet Dridia, this plastic surgeon is going to give your
print, your daughter back her old nose. Right, Right. It's this really awful hook nose
picture, you know, and she's like, no, whatever. And then she passes out. There's a
funny cameo in this scene. Did you recognize Nurse Gretchen,
the nurse that is with the doctor at all? That was. That is. That is
actress Brenda Strong. And in addition to being in Sports Night, which is one of
my favorite TV shows of all time, she played Sue Ellen Mischke on Seinfeld.
The woman who walked around in just a bra and caused Kramer to, like,
crack trash's car or whatever. Oh, okay. Yeah. She's the one who would wear the
blazer with just the bra. That was Brenda Strong. That was Nurse Gretchen. You know,
the crazy thing about it is it seems like what's happening is Princess Prince King
Roland is willing to kill everyone on his planet
so that Princess Vespa doesn't get unwanted plastic surgery.
Yeah. This doesn't seem like the right priorities for a ruler. Like, I don't
know, it's probably roughly. In line with your average powerful person.
Yeah, he folds very easily and then he gives up the
code. And in this era where there weren't a lot of. Maybe even
ATM pins weren't as common. Right. People. Basically,
when he gives the code, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, people are like, oh,
that's what dummies put on their suitcases. And I was thinking,
oh, I guess there weren't codes to unlock cell phones or anything like that.
So the suitcase and the briefcase were the big codes. God. Imagine a
world where you only had to know four passwords total.
Yeah. Oh, what a dream. The key Code whatever gets passed
to the Spaceballs. And they put Princess Vespa back in her cell. And so that's
when our heroes are able to come and actually rescue her. And now they're running.
They're trying to get out of Spaceball City, Back to Eagle 5 on
the landing pad so they can get out of there. And they've got to like.
And they're being pursued by, you know, basically the movie's version of Stormtroopers, the Spaceball
soldiers you mentioned. That's where they kind of run into the guys they
stole the uniforms from who somehow still have guns. But then they,
they make a daring escape through a closing door. And they
can all jump through and it's very exciting. And when they get inside there,
they're captured. And did you recognize good friend of the pod who is
the, the, the captain or whatever that comes in to Stephen Tobolowski.
Tobolowski. He's back. I am a huge Stephen Tobolowski
fan. Always have been, always will be. But of course, they've captured the stunt doubles,
which is such a great gag. It's another kind of Mel Brooks Hollywood movie
making gag. Right. Where it's like. Well, of course they would have used stunt doubles
to do the jump through the thing. Yeah. So the idea being. Well, if they
haven't, that's who's in there right now. That's who's actually in there is the stunt
double. So that's who gets captured. Yeah. And I love the Princess Vespa stunt double
in particular is a short guy with long hair with a mustache and a cigar.
Like he would have stab the cigar in his mouth as he's diving in.
Right. Oh, my God. So good.
Yeah, that was, that was a really funny scene. And just constant references
to this being a movie and the business of movie
making and everything. And I think the fact that Mel Brooks is even
able to get these movies made, period, is just such a big triumph
because he's not necessarily gunning for the broadest
audience. A lot of it is just insider things that are.
Yeah, so that's good stuff. So the stunt
doubles are captured. So the giant ship then is trying to make its way to
Druidia. Well, here. No, so. So before.
So they're trying to leave Spaceball City and they get Back to Eagle 5 and
the door is like, got shot. So the door is like jammed shut. And there's
this great moment where you know, they hand the
laser rifle, whatever, to Princess Vespa and she's like, I don't know what to do
with this. Like. Like, I don't shoot guns. But then one of the Spaceballs shoots
her hair and now she's pissed. And she locks and loads
this thing and just goes. And just blows away
like, seven or eight guys in a row. And I have a note here that
says, boy, Joey Trotta sure thought he was going to be Princess Vespa.
And he wasn't. So in Toy Soldiers, it didn't work out. But this was.
This was. What was in Joey Trotta's head is that he was going to be
like Princess Vespa at that point. Because in that. In my mind, in that movie,
Joey is a huge fan of Spaceball. Since this movie came out before Toy Soldiers.
Oh, for sure. If they shot him in the earring, maybe he could have gotten
mad enough to mow everybody down. But they make a comment about, you know,
oh, that was pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good for a girl. Pretty good for Rambo.
Like. Yeah. I mean, she's got like nine guys in a row. Just one shot
each of them. It was pretty impressive. Okay, so, yeah, so now they leave.
But, yeah, Spaceball 1, because they've got the code. They're on the way to
Druidia. They're ready to steal the air. The big ship. Ship.
Okay, time for the ship. Time for metamorphosis. And Dark Owens goes. Ready Kafka.
And it's just like. That's like a highbrow joke in
the middle of this absolutely insane absurdist comedy, you know? And it's just like.
I don't know. I love that. It goes all over the place. That's the funny
thing about it is you can exist in multiple realities. You could exist
in multiple levels of intellectual humor,
from the most goofy slapstick stuff to these really
kind of more arcane references. But God damn, so good.
So the ship is a Transformer, and it transforms
into the most obvious and efficient thing to steal
the air from this, which is a maid who is holding a vacuum cleaner.
Yes. Mega Maid. Mega made. Yeah.
The bag doesn't even look that big like, when it starts.
Yeah. Because they go ahead and they start her up. They put the. You know,
they've opened the gate and whatever, and they put the little vacuum cleaner opening
over it and they start sucking the air up. And, you know, of course,
it's a lot of funny stuff called the snow off the mountains and all the
trees get pulled up. Yeah. You know, King Roland starts slowly asphyxiating
because he's an idiot who let his planet die so his daughter wouldn't have a
nose job. And, you know, all this stuff is happening.
And then Lone Star is able to use the Schwartz to
move the external power switch on the
outside of this or function switch on the outside of this vacuum. Which makes no
sense that it would exist. No. No sense that it would have a reverse setting.
Yeah. But it did set up one of the funniest jokes in the near
the end of the movie, which is that, what's happening? Mega Maid, sir, She's gone
from suck to blow. Which is not a joke. I understood the first few times
I saw the movie, you know, but by my teens, I understood what that joke
was telling us. Yeah. But, yeah, so they're able to put everything right back
where it belongs. All the, all the snow falls on the correct mountain.
Trees go back into their spots, into. Their root balls or whatever. And so everything's
okay on Druid. But now our heroes have to deal with the ship
and the Spaceballs. And they could just push. They could just reverse it again,
you know. Yeah. So we get to take this thing down. So it's kind
of like the Death Star destruction type scene, except that
the hole that they're driving into is the ear of this new Mega
Maid. And driving very slowly, it seems like such
a. Such a leisurely path to get to the middle there in
that rv. And it had another scene where they get out
of the RV that they're just loose in space again.
Yeah, it's just, you can just breathe there. That's okay. Yeah,
yeah. And so this sets up. We get Lone Star finding the
self destruct button. He like breaks into part of this, you know, central nervous system
of Mega Maid or whatever it is. And this is where he is then confronted
by Dark Helmet. And so this is the sort of battle we've been waiting for.
I guess in this sense, if you're really thinking about, about the, you know,
the first Star wars movie, it would be like Obi Wan versus Darth Vader.
But I guess also it's a reference to the battle between Luke and Vader at
the end of Empire Strikes Back because we learn the connection between these two characters,
which is Dark Helmet saying that, you know, you should know
this. I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
Now, depending on how many brothers Lone
Star's dad has, that could mean the Dark Helmet and Lone
Star were roommates. Because his father's brother
is his uncle. His uncle's nephew could be him son
could be him, or could be the son of another Brother. If there were at
least three brothers in that group, and then they would. That would make Lone Star
and this other person cousins. And so potentially, it could go all the way back
to where Lone Star. Or it could mean they have absolutely no connection whatsoever,
which is probably the joke that was intended. But I have spent too much time
thinking about how you could parse father's brother's nephews,
cousins, former roommate. I don't think that he was intending to say that they lived
together once, but I still think it was funny. It was very, very convoluted.
They leave it open exactly right before that. When Lone Star sees
Dark Helmet, I love this line where he says, at last we meet for
the first time, for the last time. And he even thinks he has a look.
Yeah, that's right. I got it. Even in 1987,
there was probably so much Star wars parody that had been done.
So it's great that this seems so fresh and they
had to take a different spin on it. But still remaining true to the main
things that people understand about Star wars,
during this fight scene, there are a couple funny things that happen.
The boom mic operator getting clipped during the
scene. He did it. That was
great. Lonestar with his hand on Dark Helmet's
head, holding him at a distance, and he can't hit him with his sword.
Very Looney Tunes. Yeah, so much of that. So good
fight scene there. And then Helmut decides, hey,
you're better at this than I thought you were. This is a fair fight.
Let's go ahead and shake on it. And of course, he steals the Schwartz ring
off of Lone Star's hand and makes a big deal about.
Now Lone Star, you see why evil will always triumph because
good is dumb. And frankly, that is an accurate representation of most of the good
characters in the Star wars movies. Yeah. So, you know, kudos, Mel Brooks. But he,
like, throws the ring away or whatever. And of course, it's like, you know,
in any other movie or any other type of movie, this would seem like a
big moment of like, oh, man, what's gonna happen here? You know, And Mel Brooks
does set us up for, like, what's gonna happen? But then it's like, you know,
all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, because, again, the shorts can do whatever
it wants. Yogurt speaks to Lone Star and
says, you know, use the Schwartz. Lone Star. I can't. I lost the ring.
Ah, the ring is bupkis. I got it at the bottom of a crackerjack box.
Okay, cool. Then he can just do any, you know, and it's just kind of
like he gets a mirror and the laser blast goes back and hits Dark Helmet
and he falls into the self destruct button, starting the self destruct process
for Spaceball 1 Mega made. But it's like that could
have been. That should have been a more like serious moment. But no,
no, screw it. Do whatever. And it's just so fun. It's a funny choice.
I love that. So that is just again, so quintessentially Mel Brooks. Just be
like, I'm gonna set this up and then at the end, no, I'm just gonna
throw that away and I'm gonna do this instead because it's just easier. It's gonna
make it keep going. We can't end here. So I think this
is about when we hear the Spaceballs song for the first time.
Total Banger. Amazing. It's a
parody, but it's not overtly a joke song. Right,
right. It could fit in any of these movies. And you
have the movies of this era, those kind of lower level sci fi
type things like ice pirates and stuff like that. Like just
these things where you could picture that song sliding perfectly in the
seriousness. And then where he's talking about they're trying to steal your air. And it
just, it's such a good, such a good song. And I'm really glad we get
more of it at the end too. I feel like it was very much this
was because this movie, like it really is a Star wars spoof first.
But it clearly references many other movies. At one point, Lone Star.
Does the Vulcan neck pinch on a, on a Spaceball soldier? It has to be
told, no, nobody. Shows him how to do it. Shows him how to do it
better and all that. So there's a little reference, other stuff, but to me,
this weird. The Spaceballs is clearly a spoof of the Ghostbusters theme song.
Yeah, right. Which is like that song that, you know, just describes the movie
or describes the point. So yeah, like all we do is dirt deeds. The we're
the Space Walls is, is absolutely a song that I, I love every time I
hear it. And it fits perfectly. And like you said, it's, it's, you know,
it's, it's goofy. Ish. But it's not too goofy. Like it definitely. It's still like
a good, you know, mid-80s kind of movie rock
song. Yeah. You can groove with it while you're enjoying the movie. For sure.
For sure. We get a joke there about Rocky.
5000, although that was when. That's when
after the blow up. Lone Star and Barf are taking Vespa back
to Druidia and they're getting. It's a news telecast telling them that
Pizza the Hutt is dead. Okay. But, you know, it's like before. So it's like.
Oh, yeah. In news today, Notorious Gangster Pizza the Hutt has
died. You know, he got locked in his limo and he ate himself to death.
And then the. The. The. The. Whatever. The anchor goes. And now Pongo's
review of Rocky 5000. Because at that point, I think there had only been four
Rockies. But, yeah, they gotta make all kinds of jokes about there being too many
Rocky movies. Yeah. Yeah. And they. Who knows? The Creed
ain't done, so we might get five Creeds. Yeah. Creed's gonna have some
kids that need to become boxers. There's gonna be an MMA spinoff.
There's all kinds of stuff. A lot of places we can go with that,
for sure. So they're in this kind of rooftop, 50s diner type.
It's a truck stop. Yeah. A tight place at the end.
The only thing that I kind of would have liked to have seen as somebody
who's seeing this movie for the first time and who I'd know,
Star wars, at least the original three films, is I
would have liked a little bit more reference in this scene to kind of the
Cantina band, like those kind of characters.
That was the only thing where I was kind of expecting it. And I was
like, oh, it didn't happen. But things were kind of wrapping up at this point.
Well, they decided to fit in their alien reference. Telling one of my favorite jokes.
I still literally tell this joke as if it's my own joke. But the,
you know, like, we're stranded on a planet and he starts sniffing around and all
the trees and he says, I got it. I know where we're at. We're at
Pluto. Pluto? How can you tell? He goes, from the bark, you dummies. From the
bark. And it's just like, I love that joke. It's hilarious. Xenomorph baby
pop out of his chest. But then, of course, instead of being menacing, it goes
into a Michigan J. Frog. Hello, my baby. Hello, my daughter. It's just a great
little gag. And then, of course, you know, he had. There were only two things
ready to eat the space soup and the space special. And orders the special.
But after this guy has this chest burster come out, he go,
what did he have? He had the special. I'll take the soup. Good idea.
But. But, yeah, it's a Great. And that's. And that was the thing too,
is like, there's these little moments where they fit in spoofs of other movies.
There's that thing for Alien. And then after Mega Maid blows up, apparently they're near
a planet. It's hard to tell at the time other than Druidia, but they crash
land. The head of Mega Maid crash lands on another planet. The Planet of the
Apes. Right. Exactly. And so then they. Scroob and Sanders and Helmut,
who are the only ones left, are crawling out of her nose. And two.
Yeah, like Planet of the Apes style. Apes, you know, come up on horseback.
Oh, it's coming out of the nose. Spaceballs. Oh, shit.
There goes the planet. And so we get to get a little Planet of the
Apes reference. It's like he just decided. I feel like those jokes were written
early on when they were writing the movie and,
like, figuring out what to do. And they didn't know where to fit him in.
But these two sort of bumpers at the end of the movie are like,
well, we gotta do a Planet of the Apes joke. We gotta do an aliens
joke. Yeah, and they made it work. I mean, it definitely fits. No,
it definitely did. Well, and then Lone
Star finds out that he is, in fact, a prince.
This medallion he's had around his neck the whole time, which he's been
kind of questioning, like, what's on this? What does it say? And Yogurt knew what
it said, but he wasn't. Wasn't gonna tell him yet. Yeah, but basically it means
it's a royal birth certificate of some sort. Ridiculous. I don't know.
They don't seem too serious about the plot. I'm not gonna take it too seriously.
Move things along. Funny line by
Dot Matrix. So he ends up getting married.
He just dips into the middle of the wedding ceremony, which was funny because.
Jim J. Bullock is boring. So he's. Yeah. And the.
The officiant of that wedding was just kind of
like, let's move it along. Moving along. So they had the do you. Do you?
Kind of wedding. And then Dot Matrix says, goodbye virgin
alarm. Which is something earlier in the movie when somebody got close to the
princess, she had this virgin alarm that went off. That was a good way to.
Good way to kind of wrap things up. Yeah, I do love too. At the.
At that wedding ceremony at the end, the officiant asks,
you know, because Barf is there. They're both dressed nicely. Barf's got his hair in
a frame. French braid. And. And they're both Standing there. He goes, well, who are
you? He's like, what's your name? And he's barf. Your full name. Bar. Full of
me. Yeah. Like, all right, again,
shoehorning. Any joke that they can into it. It's just.
It's a clinic. Yeah. In what you can fit into 90 minutes.
Yes, yes, absolutely. Okay. So you hinted earlier at
connections between Spaceballs and the other movies that we've done
so far on the podcast. Yeah. So I know at least a couple, but I
want to hear what. What you're coming to the table with. Okay. Okay. So starting
with episode one, which was Groundhog Day, we had the great Stephen
Toblewski. Ned Ryerson, who was also one of the captains who
captured the stunt doubles, Correct? Yes. Number two, a little bit deeper
of a pull. Toy soldiers had a character named Yogurt. The first thing
I thought of when I saw. It's like, holy crap, this is. Right. This is
the. We got two movies with a guy named Yogurt. So Yogurt was one of
the students. He was the guy who owned the remote control plane that ended up
saving the day. And then, of course, Yogurt is the Yoda character. Yeah.
Singles. We had Bill Pullman. Yes. And he was
a little bit different in each movie. And then the Pacific Heights link that I
had is that there was a VW thing driven by Matthew Modine's character.
Also a VW thing, a floating VW thing, which was dark helmets,
desert patrol vehicle. I imagine they probably just draped,
like. Probably back then would have been blue screen. Screen, you know, like over the
tires. It's exactly what it looked like. It was just a clean cut off.
Exactly. Perfect. Well, you know, it's. It's always fun to find these links between things
we kind of didn't intend, but that's fantastic. All right, well, let's talk
about what you thought of the movie. I want to. You're the person who saw
it for the first time. This time. I want to hear your rating before I
give mine again. Like I said earlier, I wasn't sure how this would go
for me. I'm super glad that I watched it, and I think
this is something I'll watch again for sure. It's kind of hard. It's not going
to become a movie that I see 50, 50 times because there's a certain window
in our lives where those enter and. And your mid-40s is kind
of not when you find new ones fair. But I also don't think
I've seen a bunch of Mel Brooks So I. I have things that I need
to see. I haven't seen Young Frankenstein. I haven't seen Blazing Saddles
since one time in college. So I don't know, 20 years ago. I don't remember
much. Those two. Those two. At least I'd say those two. And history of the
world part one would be. Those be the three that I'd say. You got to
make sure you go see. Yes. Yeah. And I love his humor, and I love
the way that this was put together. So many people that I enjoy almost everything
they do. John Candy. I can't think of a bad John Candy performance.
Maybe who's Harry Crumb? But even he was good in that. Yeah, he.
He pulled it together. Moranis is just
so underrated. I know it's because he kind of quit acting
at a certain point for personal reasons, but he had quite a run in the
80s between Ghostbusters and Strange Brew Honey. I Shrunk
the kids even. Good. Really funny. And again, he's great in it.
He's fantastic. He makes it. He makes it. And Bill Pullman. I read
that this was only his second movie. Oh, I don't even know if that's true.
That's interesting. So. And he's just a. He's a great, funny straight
man. He could be the leading man, but is still funny enough to kind of
in a Jason Bateman kind of way where he can be the main
guy. But he is also funny. But he's not distracting funny. Right. He's not a
clown. Yeah. Yeah. Jester. Yeah. So I'm gonna give this movie
a four and a half out of five. Nice. I really
liked it. I would watch it again. I appreciate the comedy and really, it holds
up. There might be a couple dated references, but it's not the movie's fault for
existing in the time that it came out. Right. Yeah. I. I think that I'd
like to watch this with my daughter someday, too. I think she'd appreciate a lot
of the humor in it. 100. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. That means that for sure
that this, this is our first movie that we've both, I think, fully agreed on
as being very, very well worth anybody's time.
I, like I said at the start of this one, this is one of my
all time favorite movies. It's literally a top 10 comedy for me. I did a,
you know, a thing on, like, Twitter where I was like, I'm going to list
out, like, my 30 favorite movies or whatever. And. And this was on that
list. So this gets a Solid five out of five for me. There's no reason
for me not to give it a full five. I think it absolutely holds up.
I don't think that there's anything problematic enough in it that you have to worry
about. Not really. You know, a couple things that maybe skirt the line a bit.
Bit. But you know, being a racial joke does not make any racist
joke. So the, the afro pick in the desert is a funny gag. And,
and so I love this movie. Solid five for me. So at nine and a
half out of ten from the two of us, that's obviously by far the highest
rating we've collectively given any of the movies we've done so far. You don't want
to double check how Pacific Heights did? No, I think, I think
we're good there. I think we're good. But yeah, so this was my pick.
So Nick, what are we gonna see next? Yeah, this was a great pick.
And, and I'm glad to have watched one of your favorite movies.
This next one that I pick could also end up on that list.
I think it's probably something you would have seen before. It's definitely one
of my favorite movies and it's something that. It's kind of a comfort
movie. It's something I'm always in search of something that's like this movie because I
don't necessarily want to watch it every time. Even though really, really big fan
of it. 1993. Harrison Ford,
Tommy Lee Jones. Oh, yes. One of the greats. The Fugitive. Oh,
yes. I love this movie. Such an enjoyable watch. And then there's
a lot in it, like unintentional comedy type stuff that I've learned to really enjoy
over the years. I think overall this is just going to be a fun one
to talk about. I love that movie. Excited. I have not seen it probably in
four or five years. You know, it's okay. But it's definitely one I've seen multiple,
multiple, multiple times over the years. Absolute wonderful movie. You know,
has one of those movies that had scenes in it that became cultural
touch points. Yes. You know, I, I've always loved even the, you know, in Jay
and Silent Bob Strike Back they make a reference to the, the sort of damn
scene in this movie where Tommy Lee Jones is chasing Harrison Ford and, and frankly,
anything with Harrison Ford in it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be all about. There's just
not. That man has not made a bad movie in, in his multi decade career.
Yeah. And he was really at one of his many peaks of his power.
Yeah. This was sort of during that time. Like his Jack Ryan era. Right?
You know, and that kind of stuff. And fantastic. So super excited, super happy that
we'll be watching the Fugitive and everybody out there listening.
You know, watch the movie before, before we get around to it. You've got a
couple weeks before we'll release that episode. Play along at home.
Absolutely. That's the whole point. And in fact, all you folks at home, if you
watch, would please do us the favor of going on Spotify, going on Apple podcasts
and giving us a five star review. You know, rate and review the show.
It helps people find us. Let your friends know if you've been enjoying it.
This was our fifth episode. We're starting to get our groove, I feel like.
And if you want to send a note to the show, you can do that
too. You can send us an email at the show. All one word@2dads1movie.com.
That's the number two. The number one 2dads1movie.com. And yeah,
well, maybe we'll. We'll talk about what you send us and if you got a
suggestion for a movie we should watch, maybe we'll take into consideration and maybe we
won't. I don't know. But yeah, we'd love to hear from you. I mean,
it can't hurt to try. And if we ignore you, then it doesn't mean you're
a bad person. It probably just means that I was in charge of responding to
emails. I'm not good at that. I'm smart enough to know that's not. I'll handle
the email in box. It'll be fine. All right. This has been Spaceballs and this
has been 2 dads one movie. I'm Steve. I'm Nick. Thank you all so much
for listening and we'll catch you next time.