Dirs. Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, US, 2008, 84 mins
Cast: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Kevin Davitian, Kevin Sorbo, Diedrich Bader
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Whilst reviewing talent voids Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer’s Epic Movie sometime last year (it is a wholly unpleasant experience that is best quickly forgotten) the piece was rounded off with a warning to cinemagoers that if you continue to opt for this low-brow laugh-free comedy then it will continue to get made. Did you listen? Judging by the $18M opening weekend at the top of the US box office the answer is a resounding “NO”. For all that is good in cinema, and there is a lot of quality flooding the multiplexes and art house screens at the moment, please heed this final warning and avoid Meet the Spartans, because the most damning criticism offered is that it makes Epic Movie, Date Movie, and Scary Movie 4 look like Citizen Kane.
The focus of the lampooning this time around is swords n sandals epic 300, so we get Carmen Electra (again), Shaun Maguire (former Eastenders squarehead), Method Man and Kevin Sorbo (TV’s very own Hercules), it’s hardly an ensemble to make Danny Ocean quake. In between the tumbleweeds and silent post-joke pauses the writers also find time to poke fun at Transformers, Shrek 3 and, as an indication of how dearth of ideas they clearly are, Stomp the Yard.
There are two major problems with choosing 300 as the template with which to mould your Naked Gun shenanigans. The limitations of having to riff on every aspect of that film become tiresome and it seems that Friedberg and Seltzer are unwilling to veer into other movies for their laughs. As poor as the previous movies have been their scattershot approach meant that there were at least one or two smile-breakers in the running time, much like an average sketch show. Meet the Spartans is one long, tiresome joke. When that joke is all about the homoerotic subject that the baby-oiled bodies of 300 epitomised then the makers are completely missing the point. At the time of release such theories and obvious themes were raised and joked about by film-critics and fans alike so to have to watch such pithy discussions at the time stretched over a still too long 84mins is painfully dated.
Full of toilet humour that misses the bowl and already high on the list for worst film (if it can be classified as one) of the year this so called spoof is just plain dumb.
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