The Boxtrolls and Mr. Peabody & Sherman (both 2014)

What an odd time for animation. Even if we watch a film where the plot only ever hums and characters never pop, we can still marvel at the onscreen techno wonder. Everything looks amazing! “The Boxtrolls” and “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” – the former stop motion mixed with CGI, the latter all CGI – are prime examples. Hum. No pop. “Boxtrolls” comes from studio Laika, who made “Coraline,” an edgy horror tale for cool kids. But “Trolls” misfires with title characters -- tiny ogres live under a Victorian-era city and dress in discarded cardboard -- that fail to spark or overcome their human counterparts, including a status-hungry villain (Ben Kingsley) with a penchant for cabaret. Bummer. Only a fourth-wall-crashing Monty Pythonesque riff on “free will” fired my brain, during the end credits. A remake of the old cartoon shorts about a time-traveling dog and his not-so-bright human boy, “Peabody” is full of a breezy slapstick, bad puns, and warped histories of the Trojan War, Mona Lisa, and more. It relies on poop jokes and greatly underserves a female companion, but it gets in a Mel Brooks cameo as Einstein, and I love Mel Brooks. Boxtrolls: C+ Peabody: B

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” is setup as the lowest common denominator flick ever made, complete with barbecued beans and farts around a campfire, but that’s the real joke as “Blazing” blazes the false square-jawed Anglo heroes old Hollywood Westerns and their rah-rah-rah Americana propaganda, the very racist founding of our great nation and all the right-wing patriots who shrug off slavery and massacres as not that bad. Brooks pushes every over-the-top, vulgar joke to the point of jaw-dropping delirium. Some work, some don’t. And Brooks ain’t kidding around. The plot is almost beside the point: Circa 1874, Cleavon Little is Black Bart, an African-American railroad worker handpicked as a prank to become sheriff of a small town marked for railroad right-of-way. His sidekick: The Waco Kid, the fastest drunk in the west, played by Gene Wilder. Alex Karras is a thug with an acute philosophy of life, Harvey Korman a bigot, and Madeline Kahn is so f’n tired. Brooks, working from a caustic script co-written by Richard Pryor, opens with a sing-along scene of “Sweet Chariot” as the best put down of white thug bigots ever put to film. Classic. P.S. I know bigots who’ll never “get” this film. A+

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

Why make a spoof of “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” when Kevin Costner’s performance was its own piece of trash-art comedy, a knitting needle in the ear of anyone whose blood runs remotely English? But, Mel Brooks dishes up “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” anyway, and it’s a tired comedy that traipses out of Sherwood and over to Queens, New York, for a useless “Godfather” joke. Meow! Other Robin Hoods are spoofed, and, yes, Monica Lewinsky is referenced. Eww. Worse than the worst bits of “Spaceballs,” and miles below the heights of Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein,” “Blazing Saddles” and “The Producers,” this is just dullsville. Cary Elwes is ordered to play a dull version of his own Robin Hood hero from “The Princess Bride,” a classic genre spoof all its own. When Brooks went soft his films turned from “Must watch” to “Nothing else is on.” I saw this in the theater, and hated it. My second viewing … ohh, shame on me. C-

Paul (2011) and Spaceballs (1987)

Within a few days of each other, I watched “Spaceballs” and “Paul,” two comedy-spoofs that kick the shins while kissing the feet of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in their full 1970s “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” glory. Hell, this blog title is named after “Close Encounters,” so I and my fellow sci-fi geeks are a happy target, too. So on we go…

Every child of the 1980s has seen “Spaceballs,” Mel Brooks’ spoof of “Star Wars” with rips at “Star Trek,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Alien” tossed in as extras. I knew this film before I knew several of the targets, being 13 in 1987. But space battles are not what Brooks is satirizing here. Rather, he targets the crass commercialization of those films, especially Lucas’ still-insatiable thirst for dollars: The way selling childish Ewok action figures became more important than crafting a nuanced child-like imaginative finale to the hallmark trilogy of Generation X’s youth. “Spaceballs” even stops midpoint to hawk its own release on VHS, a wiser joke now with present-day instant downloads and DVD releases within 8 weeks of a theatrical run.

The plot is “Star Wars” simple: A space cowboy named Lonestar (Bill Pullman) must rescue a princess (Daphne Zuniga) from the evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis, stealing the film even with his face covered most of the time). Brooks plays two parts: A “Wizard of Oz”-like lizard alien named Yogurt, spoofing Yoda, and a clueless president, modeled after, dare I say, Ronald Reagan. But it’s not a laugh riot. With none of Gene Wilder’s sharp gags and line delivery from “Producers,” Brooks’ comedy flounders far more than it soars.

Brooks relies on Jewish jokes, and one penis gag after another. Those get old fast. Much of the time, “Spaceballs” just sits there, almost proudly being dull as the heroes really are an unmemorable bunch of slouches. If that joke is on purpose, it back fires. Or one wonders if Brooks’ is just coasting. My theory: He doesn’t love “Star Wars” enough to really tear into it, and have giddy dirty fun as he did in “Blazing Saddles” or “Young Frankenstein.”

Brooks might enjoy “Paul,” with its dick and smoking pot jokes and the “I’m not gay” gay humor that play throughout. Realized in spring 2011, “Paul” plays along similar lines of “Spaceballs,” but stays on Earth with a classic two pals in a road chase plot. It’s more interesting, and has better lead actors. Even better: Some big sci-fi stars pop by spoofing our image of them. And we have Jason Bateman finally (finally!) playing a bad-ass fed prick, with a black suit and a gun. He’s no pocket protector nerd here. He rocks the part.

Our focus is on two Brit sci-fi nerds (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who previously teamed in “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”) who are in the States for Comic Con at San Diego, and then a road-trip in an RV to see Area 51, the famed Black Mailbox and all the other alien invasion hot spots dotted along America. Running from a couple red necks ala “Deliverance,” our heroes see a car crash on the desert highway. The driver: A little green alien. Just like in all the History Channel specials, big raisin head, big black eyes, wee frail body. But this guy sports the demeanor of Seth Green, the actor who made me hate “Green Hornet,” but like such fare as “Superbad.” Speaking of that, Greg Mottola, the guy who directed “Superbad,” is in charge here.

This is a love letter to all films sci-fi, and other American hits: “E.T.,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Blues Brothers,” “Thelma & Louise,” the list goes on. But there’s also a tweak of all those films, as our green guy here dismisses “E.T.” hi-jinks, and smokes a joint with his road trip buddies. There are plenty of great jokes here, but some of the film – including a bit with a Christian fanatic (Kristin Wiig) – drag. At 90 minutes, “Paul” might have been great, at more than 110 minutes, and with an ugly punch of graphic blood, this alien sticks around longer than it should. Closing on a high note: Bateman’s character sarcastically rips into his minions, each a sci-fi fanatic. “You’re a grown man, right?,” he mocks them, and us in the audience. Ouch. But clever.

“Spaceballs”: C+ “Paul”: B

The Producers (1968)

"The Producers" is my favorite comedy of all time.

From the start, this 1968 Mel Brooks comedy about two men intentionally producing the ultimate Broadway bomb in order to make a fortune is a sick, twisted and nasty joke. It opens with Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock making it with an elderly widow. Sex. He seeks her money, she seeks a fucking thrill. Tit-for-tat. He has lots of these encounters, you see. In walks Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), a panic-prone accountant with no spine. Poking around Max's cooked books, Bloom realizes that a producer can make more money off a Broadway bomb than a Broadway hit. The con is on as the two men finance a sure-fire dud in "Springtime for Hitler" -- a glowing Nazi tribute written by a fanatical SS loyalist. Sick. Twisted. Nasty.

The laugh per minute ratio is God-sized high, none more so than the realization that Brooks is ripping Hollywood's low tastes, not Broadways. Brooks' staging of the play within the film is so offensive, it's brilliant.

The cast is on all cylinders from Mostel and Wilder to Kenneth Mars ("Young Frankenstein") as the Nazi and Christopher Hewitt ("Mr. Belvedere") as a cross-dressing gay director. PC this is not, thank God. Every line is a classic and endlessly quotable. Avoid the terrible musical remake; it's offensively bad. A+