Don't you dare badmouth Men in Tights in my presence.

RSR is deeply fond of men in tights.

I object to IZ's opinion of Spaceballs as strongly as it is possible to object.


Men in Tights never did it for me though.

I liked Life Stinks.

:'(

Maybe I'm too tough on the ol' Spaceballs..it's got its moments for sure, but its myriad pop culture references sort of signalled the beginning of a change in satirical comedy, ushering in so many Family Guys, Robot Chickens and Scary Movies.

Reference comedy isn't Spaceballs's's fault.

You ever see a little known bit of Oscar Bait called Naked Space? It's probably on poeTV somewhere, it should be.

Spaceballs is like a good middle ground in the Mrl Brooks canon. Below his true classics, but hardly a stinker.

Cena's right.

Honestly, I prefer it to High Anxiety and about half of History of the World Pt. 1, too.

When I was about twelve all my friends were really into this movie. I never got it.

Maggot Brain and Infinite Zest are wrong. I like you guys but you guys are just wrong on this.

Heh, that's one of my favorite lines from any Brooks film. I guess another thing I liked about it was that it felt like it was written by a person who never saw the movies, just sort of had a very basic synopsis of all three films as told to him by a 6 year-old.

And yeah, History of the World loses a lot of steam after the Inquisition number. My personal favorite is still Young Frankenstein with Blazing Saddles in second place, although I really like Silent Movie, just haven't seen it for a good 20 years.

I watched Silent Movie for the first time in about that long last fall, it aged really well. Those are my favorites too, for sure, with Spaceballs a strong contender for #4.

Spaceballs is the one I've rewatched the most though.

I think I figured out something about Spaceballs here:

http://sotcaa.org/comment/referencecomedy.html


Specifically:

"LEVEL THREE
Months later still. An older generation of comedians finally grasps that there's a new THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT to refer to in their tired acts. Again, for the most part, these comedians need not have experienced the THAT WOMAN WITH THE TITS WHO DOES GARDENING first hand. The media climate has told them that it's time to do a parody of it in their non-negotiable Christmas shows. Whether they do this to appear 'on the ball' like the younger comedians who discovered how easy it was in the first place, or because they themselves started out as cocksure as those young shitters and have refused to let go is debatable. But the whole situation is deeply embarrassing - almost a comedianic version of pensioners still referring to teenagers as 'hippies' or 'punk rockers'. To call the older comedians 'out of touch' is fair, but it can be argued that the younger generation of comedians deemed 'on the ball' aren't contributing anything better. They just happen to get there first. "


This is pretty much what Spaceballs is on the surface (and what Men In Tights was to the core, in my opinion), but the twist is that whether by happy accident or because he was still a pretty sharp parodist underneath it all, the bad jokes, the shameless cash in, Mel Brooks' obvious near-complete ignorance of what he was parodying, become the joke and for me at least it works.

I bet this movie was hell to make. Complicated makeup and costumes, big sets, special effects. And Mel Brooks doesn't even seem to like Star Wars. Why would you put so much effort into making a parody of something you don't care about.

Everyone knows the Drewish Cabal controls the canned air market.