Meet
The Spartans
After an entire class of high school students
showed up at the Friday 12:40 PM show I attended, I can only assume the
Washington, DC School District now considers this movie to be history
class field trip material, or it was senior skip day. Sadly, only the
truants were laughing at the “jokes” in Meet
The
Spartans (remembering how these children are our future only
made me
feel worse).
In this spoof of 300,
Sean Maguire stars as King Leonidas –
leader of the Spartans, who is taking them to war against a Persian
force that far out numbers them. Along the way, we learn about the
deception and betrayal that could lead to his defeat, and see all of
the potty humor jokes writers/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron
Seltzer could come up with (I bet it was an all-nighter featuring a
case of Mountain Dew).
Will
King Leonidas and his warriors defeat Xerxes (Ken Davitian)? Will you
laugh?
You only have to wait 5 seconds into the movie to get the first vomit
joke, and if that doesn’t drive you out of the theater and on
your way to see Cloverfield
again, nothing will. One of the guilty
pleasures in Meet The Spartans is watching
stand-ins for some of our
most annoying celebrities (Britney Spears, Paula Abdul, etc.) get
kicked into the giant pit of death, but I wish I could have snuck up
behind the cast and crew of Meet The Spartans to do
the same.
Friedberg and Seltzer are the brains behind Scary Movie 4,
Date Movie
and Epic Movie, and banishing them forever would
save us from Carmen
Electra’s annual lesson to young Hollywood starlets about
what happens to your career if you don’t invest your money
well. Seriously, Electra is a stunning woman, but she has been in Scary
Movie, Scary Movie 4, Date Movie,
Epic Movie AND Meet The
Spartans. If
I didn’t know better, or believed she was desperate enough, I
would think she was dating Friedberg or Seltzer or both.
While previous movies by these guys often couldn’t maintain
the main plot and parody, Meet The Spartans has
more focus and
consistency when it comes to sticking to a satire of 300.
However,
Frienberg and Seltzer decide the film industry doesn’t have
enough targets
for their stinging and cutting wit, so they expand their list of
victims to include television shows, internet standouts, video games
and commercials (mixed in with obvious, but unfunny, product
placements). I guess 2007 had too many sequels, so the guys had to
branch out to other mediums to avoid repeating themselves. However,
they don’t branch out much when it comes to the humor.
Meet The Spartans is the same,
tired, boring, ridiculous collection of
jokes about every bodily fluid possible, a series of appearances by
familiar fictional characters and celebrity look-alikes that
doesn’t do much more than make them seem dumber than usual
and some homophobia thrown in, but, as I have found with all of these
movies, we need triple the jokes, and we need funnier jokes as well.
It’s not a good sign when Friedberg and Seltzer use the
narrator to point out some of the humor, because there is nothing
subtle or
witty in Meet The Spartans that might fly over your
head. Surprisingly, they don’t even
include most of the scenes showcased in the commercials and trailers
that have been running incessantly.
Meet The Spartans is rated PG-13
for crude and sexual content throughout, language and some comic
violence
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