Lost In Space

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

A lot of the gags are pretty good. The Millennium Falcon, for example, has been turned into an unkempt recreational vehicle, and its wookie copilot is now a dog-faced John Candy, who has trouble maneuvering his tail in tight places. Yoda has been transformed into Yogurt (Mel Brooks), the borscht-belt sage who has a profitable sideline in movie merchandising. And so forth.

The crew flings itself energetically through space in search of laughs, but it will never penetrate the galaxy where Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein traced their giddy orbits. It's not that Star Wars is less worthy of satire than horse opera or gothic horror. It's not that Mel Brooks has lost his cunning, though he does need a freedom of speech not to be found under a PG rating. What's missing is that zany old gang of his, ranging in size from Zero Mostel to Marty Feldman, in shape from Madeline Kahn to Dom DeLuise (who does deliver the voice of Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs). With their living- caricature presences, they could have proved and improved Brooks' comic points. And when comic invention failed him, they could have earned laughs just by standing there, making faces. There is simply nobody like them on this trip.