Jon Lovitz, who was five seasons deep into Saturday Night Live, decided that Emperor Todd Spengo was going to be his big screen breakthrough. He was so convinced of it that when Lorne Michaels gave him an ultimatum during the shoot, basically “come back for the new SNL season or don’t come back at all”, Lovitz chose the movie.
He bet his seat at the most famous table in comedy on an alien despot in stick-on muttonchops, ruling a planet full of idiots, on a film produced by HBO.
Five months earlier, Mike Myers had taken an SNL character to theatres and Wayne’s World made $183 million. So the model for “SNL guy becomes movie star” was being re-validated in real time – probably for the first time since the late 70s and early 80s. Lovitz likely thought he was next in line.
But Mom and Dad Save the World wasn’t plugged into anything. It was a family adventure where the parents were the heroes, pitched to a generation of kids who’d spent a decade knowing, for a fact, that parents didn’t save us, we saved them.
But the movie went home to HBO, and did what a lot of comedies did in the 90s when nobody was paying attention. It just played. On rotation. Tuesday afternoons, late nights, weekends when nothing else was on. And when there’s no ticket price, no rental fee, no parent reading the back of the box at Blockbuster deciding if this is worth it, the only thing that mattered is whether it held your attention for a few minutes at a time.
And Lovitz definitely had the chops to hold your attention for a few minutes at a time. -Pop
Mom and Dad Save the World arrived on home video this week in 1993, after a July 24, 1992 theatrical release that lasted roughly one week before Warner Bros. pulled it from screens.
