Spaceballs: The Animated Series DVD Review

Spaceballs: The Animated Series arrives as an uneven, largely forgotten mid-2000s artifact. The single-season curiosity tries to bottle Mel Brooks’ signature parody energy for the cable animation boom and sometimes comes up short. Airing primarily on G4 (with a Canadian Super Channel run) in 2008–2009, the show retains enough of the original film’s DNA and several key voices to feel like a legitimate extension, yet constantly undercuts itself with limited animation, uneven writing, and the conspicuous absence of a couple of the movie’s most essential performers. Originally a one-line joke mentioned in Spaceballs, the series was a low-budget production made to keep the brand alive for its 20th anniversary with decidedly mixed results.

The premise is straightforward and steeped in its era. Each episode pastes the Spaceballs characters into a broad spoof of whatever big franchise was dominating the cultural conversation. “Revenge of the Sithee” does the Star Wars prequels (complete with a young “Pannakin Crybaby”). “Lord of the Onion Rings” goes full Lord of the Rings. “Watch Your Assic Park” targets Jurassic Park.

Spaceballs: The Animated Series is a curiosity rather than a rediscovered gem

The approach is pure mid-2000s reference comedy, closer in spirit to Comedy Central’s beloved Drawn Together or the wave of theatrical spoof films (Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, etc) than the character-driven satire of the 1987 movie. Jokes often amount to “it’s that thing from the popular movie, but with Spaceballs characters,” which lands intermittently when the target is sharp and collapses into limp comedy when it isn’t.

Visually, the series is pure budget reality. The animation is limited Flash-style work with stiff movement, recycled backgrounds, and a flat digital sheen that never approaches the tactile production design or practical-effects inventiveness of the feature. Characters move like paper cutouts; action sequences lack weight or kinetic energy. It’s the kind of production where you can almost see the spreadsheet. Most of the money clearly went into securing the voice cast rather than the drawings. The result feels cheap even by the standards of contemporary adult animation on Comedy Central or Spike at the time, and the low-fi look undercuts the more ambitious parody set pieces.

That voice cast is both the show’s greatest asset and its biggest liability. Mel Brooks returns as President Skroob and Yogurt, still delivering the same gleeful, Borscht Belt cadences. Daphne Zuniga reprises Princess Vespa with the right mix of entitlement and exasperation. Joan Rivers is back as Dot Matrix, her sharp timing intact. Dom DeLuise even returns for a final turn as Pizza the Hutt, his last recorded performance before his death in 2009, which carries a small, melancholy charge. Tino Insana steps into the late John Candy’s role as Barf with competent comic energy, even if he can’t fully recapture Candy’s effortless warmth. The biggest problem with the original movie cast reprising their roles is Joan Rivers, who is given almost nothing memorable or original.

What’s missing is felt acutely. Rick Moranis’s Dark Helmet was the original film’s comic engine as an insecure, nasal, almost endearing villain whose every line landed with perfect comic timing. Dee Bradley Baker is a talented voice actor, but he cannot replicate Moranis’s specific, irreplaceable cadence or the quiet pathos beneath the helmet. Bill Pullman’s Lone Starr is also gone, replaced by Rino Romano in a barely serviceable and less charismatic performance. Without those two anchors, the central dynamic shifts. The show loses some of the original’s oddball chemistry and leans harder on Brooks’ dual roles and broader gag-writing.

Humor-wise, the series is wildly inconsistent. Occasional bits land such as Dark Helmet’s origin story in the Sithee episode that has some inventive prequel-skewering jokes, and a few of the bigger set pieces generate mild amusement from the sheer absurdity of the premise. More often the jokes feel dated even by 2008 standards, relying on rapid-fire pop-culture name-checks rather than the layered character comedy or visual invention that made the movie endure. The adult-animation tone (replete with crude gags, sexual innuendo, mild gore) sits awkwardly alongside the family-friendly nostalgia of the source material, never quite committing to the mean-spirited edge of Drawn Together or the sharper cultural satire of better Mel Brooks work.

In the end, Spaceballs: The Animated Series is a curiosity rather than a rediscovered gem. It preserves just enough of the original film’s spirit and voice talent to be watchable for die-hard fans, and the franchise-of-the-week structure occasionally yields a clever twist. But the limited animation, the absence of Moranis and Pullman, and the reliance on surface-level parody keep it from ever truly taking flight. It’s a product of its moment and the series feels every bit as disposable as that description suggests. One season was probably the right amount.

Episode Guide:

Pilot Part 1: The Avenge of Dark Helmet (or Dark Helmet’s Revenge) — June 4, 2008
Pilot Part 2: The Schwartz Strikes Back — June 4, 2008
Revenge of the Sithee — September 21, 2008 (parody of the Star Wars prequel trilogy)
Grand Theft Starship — September 21, 2008 (parody of Grand Theft Auto)
Lord of the Onion Rings — September 21, 2008 (parody of The Lord of the Rings)
Watch Your Assic Park — September 21, 2008 (parody of Jurassic Park)
Outbreak — October 5, 2008 (parody of Outbreak)
Hairy Putter and the Gopher of Fire — October 5, 2008 (parody of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
The Mighty Meteor — October 12, 2008 (parody of Armageddon)
Spaceballs of the Caribbean — October 12, 2008 (parody of Pirates of the Caribbean)
Fishfinger — October 19, 2008 (parody of Goldfinger)
The Skroobinator — October 19, 2008 (parody of The Terminator)
Deep Ship — October 26, 2008 (parody of Titanic)
Druidian Idol — October 26, 2008 (parody of American Idol)
Spidermawg — November 2, 2008 (parody of Spider-Man)

MVD licenses the animated show from MGM’s archives with satisfactory video results, if limited by the stiff source material. This was a series made for cable television syndication and the crude animation is serviceable at best without the benefit of HD.

All fifteen episodes made for Spaceballs: The Animated Series are spread evenly over two dual-layered DVDs, encoded in standard MPEG-2 with an effective effort. Originally airing in 2008, the animation resembles the low-budget techniques pioneered by Comedy Central in the early 2000s with limited motion and static backgrounds. Most of the budget seems to have gone into securing the original voice cast from the movie.

It’s unknown if this cartoon was animated in HD but MVD respects the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio that aired on G4. The two-part “pilot” episode shows header issues at the top edge of the frame. It isn’t visible on the thirteen regular episodes.

Standard-definition video for animation doesn’t look great in 2026 but it’s very possible this is the best Spaceballs: The Animated Series will ever look.

Each episode comes with solid 2.0 Dolby Digital audio in full stereo. Veteran animation composer Paul Buckley’s score is heard in a spacious spread with clean dialogue by the star-studded voice cast. The high-quality recording has excellent oomph and fine dynamics.

Optional English SDH subtitles play in a yellow font.

Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs: The Animated Series is #71 in MVD’s Rewind Collection. This is a two-disc DVD set despite MVD’s best efforts at mimicking their regular Blu-ray packaging. It comes in a clear BD case with a collectible mini-poster inside and slipcover in first pressings. Bonus features are scant and I can’t find any information on a possible prior release. There is almost no chance this show ever sees Blu-ray.

The DVDs are marked for Region 1.

Spaceballs Theatrical Trailer (01:37 in SD)

Spaceballs 2 Teaser Trailer (01:42 in SD)

Hardware Wars Trailer (01:29 in SD)

Full disclosure: This Blu-ray was provided by the label for review. This has not materially affected DoBlu’s editorial process. For information on how we handle all review material, please visit DoBlu’s about us page.