Spaceballs [Special Edition, Old Version]

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I remember the first time I ever saw "Spaceballs"-Mel Brooks' take on disposable science fiction-in the theater. I loved it. Of course, I was thirteen. Back then, I laughed at farts, fake vomit and Benny Hill. As I have matured, so have my tastes, and I have discovered that "Spaceballs" is, actually, a moderately funny movie, but a poor film.

What makes this film all the poorer is that it comes from the mind of Mel Brooks, a legendary comic giant capable of so much more. When I first saw "Young Frankenstein," I came away saying to myself, "Wow-what a great film." After I saw "Spaceballs," I turned to my buddies and said, "Remember the part when..."

This illustrates the weakness of "Spaceballs." It is not a cohesive film with all the components sharing a unity of vision. It is, instead, an excuse to delve into the Brooks repertoire of sight gags and toilet humour and string them together into an hour-and-a-half yuk-fest. Many of the individual parts are quite funny, and sometimes inspired ("They've gone to plaid!"), but they seldom advance the hair-thin plot. Brooks seemed to have a true appreciation and love for the material in "Young Frankenstein," turning that film into more of an homage than a satire or take-off. One gets the idea that Brooks simply doesn't "get" "Star Wars" or "Star Trek," the two primary sources of material for "Spaceballs." The few jokes that do actually reference the space sagas are obvious and passé. Brooks has brought nothing new to the table, and what he has brought found its way into theaters about five or so years too late.

But on to the DVD. The image and video of "Spaceballs" leaves a lot to be desired. The 1.74:1 image is somewhat washed-out and seems a little too brownish in hue. Although fairly sharp, the transfer seems rather grainy; I could not decide if this was due to the grain of the film stock, or to pixellation. Additionally, the picture, on both the widescreen and the pan-and-scan versions, seems off-set to the right, cutting off a portion of the picture in the process. To illustrate: in the scene where Dr. Schlotkin is threatening Princess Vespa, a picture is held up-on the right of the screen-of her original nose, and you can barely see the nose at all! Though this is probably the worst case of imbalance in the entire film, and the only case where it is tangible, most of the film still feels rather skewed. Pick any scene where there are three people in a row filling up the screen, and you will find that there is more space on the left than on the right. Of the two versions provided on the disc, I would suggest the widescreen over the pan-and-scan. The widescreen, while cutting slightly more off the top and bottom than the pan-and-scan, reveals far more on the sides, and in this cramped, horizontally-handicapped transfer, every millimeter counts.