Sick Product of a Sick System

Best movie of this year hands down!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Teri Garr, Jeffrey Jones, Jon Lovitz and Eric Idle star in this 1992 sci-fi comedy. Lovitz (Big) plays obnoxious and cruel emperor, Tod Spengo who sets his sights on married woman, Marge Nelson (Garr) before he intends on destroying her planet, Earth. She and her husband, Dick (Jones) go away for their anniversary, but are taken to a far away galaxy instead where Tod awaits on a planet full of idiots. Dick fights to save Marge from marrying Tod and tries to save Earth from destruction. Idle (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) plays King, Raff. This isn't a bad film, it pokes fun at sci-fi flicks & serials, Garr, Jones & Lovitz are good in it and the late, Jerry Goldsmith's score is great as usual. I recommend this.

It's sad how defensive positive reviews of this movie are. It as though the reviewers fear upsetting that Great Todd Spengo of the film world, the Cult of Star Wars.This is one of the last and best products of the pre-CGI dictatorship that fantasy and sci-fi now labor under. The art direction is imaginative and very accomplished, presenting a steampunk by way of Oz physicality denied those raised on green screen.The cast is perfect. Jon Lovitz absolutely becomes the essence of every overcompensating "small man" who ever got an ounce of authority. His smallest gesture or expression project his total inadequacy. I laugh at his every scene.I've loved Teri Garr since I first saw her on an episode of the Andy Griffith show, and this is a fine capper to a showbiz career which she seems to have retreated from.Everyone else throws themselves into their roles with a joyful abandon. I'll bet the set was a fun place to be.The story pops along at a brisk pace, never once looking back over it's shoulder, or digressing into something "meaningful". Every time I watch this I'm once again surprised to realize, as Mom and Dad wheel back into their driveway, that their kids haven't been seen since the beginning of the movie. Any director of this today would have layered some crap "coming of age" parallel plot line and stretched the flick to two-plus hours.Is this film silly, escapist? Is the science pure bunk? Is Spengo and it's society improbable and ridiculous? You darn betcha! But so is Star Wars.Stick that in your planet destroying death ray and smoke it.PS. I've got a feeling there's a raunchier version of this that hit the cutting room floor.

Spoilers herein.I really liked this, and for much of the same reason I dislike Mel Brooks. With Brooks, the gags are king; around them you arrange characters. And then you fabricate some sort of story and surroundings.Projects like this start with a notion about a world, in which you have a story, which has characters which have gags. It is a more coherent way of creating. Now, in both cases, say this and `Space Balls,' you have rank stupidity and juvenile humor. But here, the humor is situated in a world whose physics is itself funny.Its a little like the Bizzaro Superman world. An even better example is the world of Dr Seuss. And indeed the set design is a cross between organic exotica of Cronenberg and Geiger, art nouveau architecture and Dr Seuss.You really only watch these sorts of things for the art and hope that there is enough charm and humor to take up the rest of the space. This art is pretty good. Not great like the sets for `Casper.' But engaging.And there are a few jokes, especially the in jokes like having Wallace Shawn be a brainsucker. He had long since done `Andre' and was beginning work on `Vanya.' This joke is sweet.Terri Garr may not have been the right one for this role. I would have picked Joan Cusack and cast her brother as her husband. Or maybe Geena Davis of just a couple years earlier. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Star Wars, Gone With The Wind, and The God Father all fell by the wayside when Mom and Dad Save the World entered the world of entertainment. There is nothing that ever has been or that ever will be as good as this immensely powerful work of film-art. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll never want to watch any other movie after seeing such an amazing film.