Mom and Dad Save the World is a 1992 adventure, family romantic comedy movie which stars Jon Lovitz, Teri Garr, Jeffrey Jones, Eric Idle, Thalmus Rasulala and other actors. Jon Lovitz plays Emperor Tod Spengo who is the cruel, silly and over-dramatic emperor of the planet named Spengo. Teri Garr plays Marge Nelson and Jeffrey Jones plays Dick Nelson, her husband.
Plot
Emperor Spengo, with General Afir at his side, takes over a small planet at the edge of the galaxy populated entirely by idiots, and renames it after himself. He orders that all the resources of the planet should be engaged to create his "Super Death Ray Laser". The laser's purpose is to destroy Earth, thus making Spengo the greatest planet in the Universe. When Emperor Spengo looks at exactly where his Laser would strike, he sees Marge Nelson exercising — and falls in love.
Using his Magnobeam (a giant magnet), he kidnaps Marge and her husband Dick as they are on their way to a 20th-anniversary weekend. He hopes to make Marge his before he blows up the Earth. Dick and Marge get separated on Spengo, Marge is sent to the lap of luxury, waited on by small people with fish or dog heads, while Dick is thrown into a dungeon. In the dungeon, however, Dick meets the rightful king of Spengo, played by Eric Idle, who has plans hidden in his pants and a son—the White Bird—out in the desert.
Emperor Spengo quickly finds that his advances towards Marge are failing, so he tries to read Dick's mind in order to discover the secret to her heart. Following Dick's mind-probing, one of the Destroyers, Sibor (Wallace Shawn), has a change of heart when asked to execute the Earth-man. Encouraging Dick to not lose his woman and their love the diminutive Destroyer frees Dick and helps him break out of the chamber. Despite the stupidity of his captors, Dick is soon discovered and forced down a garbage chute to the sewers. While in the dark, inundated tunnel, he is approached by a cute-looking mushroom-like creature. Dick pets the mushroom but the mushroom is actually trying to eat Dick and this prompts the mushroom's family to come out and chase him around the sewers trying to eat him. Dick manages to escape the sewers, steal and escape pod and winds up crashing miles away in the desert where he meets the rightful king's son and daughter as well as their followers. All of them are dressed as 6-foot-tall birds, although such creatures are not naturally found on Spengo. The only weapons they have to fight the Emperor and the Destroyers are rocks, "their intelligence" and a number of stolen weapons, including Light Grenades, which completely disintegrate anyone who picks one up. During dinner, as a token of appreciation, the warriors give Dick their planet's honorary meal: Hot & Spicy Lub-Lub. Actually, Lub-Lubs are the mushrooms who tried to kill and eat Dick earlier in the film. He is hesistant to eat it but forces himself to do so.
General Afir, who appears to be the only intelligent person among Spengo's forces, believes that Dick and Marge are the key to ending Spengo's rule and wasteful squandering of the planet's resources, so he hatches a plan to stop the megalomaniac. He switches the love serum meant for Marge with water and informs her of his intentions to search for Dick, but Spengo overhears Afir's plan and has him placed in the barrel of the Laser to die when Earth is destroyed.
During the wedding ceremony, a detachment of Spengo's soldiers go into the desert to finish the rebels, but find their camp deserted. One by one they fall victim to one of the Light Grenades which has been left on Dick's pallet. In the meantime, Dick approaches Spengo's fortress with a large wooden bust of Spengo, reading "In Tod We Trust". At first Spengo says it is an obvious trick, but soon makes it clear he is only focused on the fact that it doesn't look quite like him. In the end he tells the guards to bring it in and show everyone how much it "doesn't" look like him. When the head pops off, the final battle begins.
As fighting rages in the castle, Tod retreats to his lab with Marge and prepares to fire the Laser at Earth. Dick and Tod clash with swords, but neither shows any particular skill. Marge manages to use Dick's sword to cut her bonds and helps Dick defeat Tod and knock him into the garbage chute. As the two of them kiss and exchange "I love you"'s, the bound and gagged Afir gives them a muffled reminder about the Death Ray and they manage to shut it off as the countdown makes it half way to zero. Instead of firing a blast through Afir's stomach and destroying Earth, the nozzle of the laser emits a few sputtering flames and goes quiet.
Down in the sewers, Tod's loud descent and splash awakens the killer mushrooms and they follow the sound of his voice which leads them to him and seeing the sight of the mushrooms prompts Tod to let out a terrified final scream. He is killed and eaten by them (offscreen).
After the rightful king is reinstated he reverses the polarity on the Magnobeam to send Dick and Marge home. They arrive home with some slight damage to the car (which stuns their kids), and then proceed to show their son, daughter, and her boyfriend slides from "Santa Barbara". Their daughter and her boyfriend find the images weird, but their son, Alan (Danny Cooksey) thinks it's "genius".
To end their anniversary, they have drinks and make love on the roof.
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