Mom and Dad Save the World Reviews

Striving for the antic shoddiness of such cheapo cult films as SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS and FLESH GORDON, MOM AND DAD SAVE THE WORLD succumbs instead to its dim-witted screenplay and cloddish direction. On a distant planet populated exclusively by imbeciles, good King Raff (Eric Idle) is overthrown and imprisoned by the dense Emperor Tod Spengo (Jon Lovitz). Peering through a telescope at a Southern California landscape, Spengo spies air-headed mom, Marge Nelson (Teri Garr). Obsessed with this average housewife, Spengo teleports Marge and her couch-potato husband, Dick (Jeffrey Jones), to his planet. Before long, Marge and Dick become embroiled in planetary revolution and Dick asserts himself as the leader of a misfit band of nutty revolutionaries set on restoring King Raff to the throne. Co-written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, MOM AND DAD SAVE THE WORLD is too calculating and self-serving by far, striving with a manic intensity for its own cult status. Lost on the filmmakers, unfortunately, is the fact that cult movies always possess a dark, disturbing subtext. MOM AND DAD SAVE THE WORLD, on the other hand, is all surface blather. The screenplay wades into a cesspool of dumb jokes of the "Bazooka Joe" variety and, in the absence of any comic variations, becomes very annoying very quickly. The actors (particularly Jon Lovitz) stomp around, pop their eyes and maul the scenery in a comic expressionism that can only be explained as a desperate attempt to convey the intended spirit of the film. Greg Beeman's oafish direction makes Jules White look like Ernst Lubitsch. In it's terminally hip idiocy, MOM AND DAD SAVE THE WORLD recalls such aborted 1960s comedies as JOHN GOLDFARB PLEASE COME HOME and THE PHYNX, but its retrograde modernism places it squarely in a below-par Mel Brooks late-80s atmosphere. As such, tots with their brains addled by too much Super Nintendo may find the film enjoyable, but their parents will be squirming in their seats.