Image courtesy of Yahoo News
Director
Jason Friedberg
Aaron Seltzer
Cast
Sean Maguire……….Leonidas
Carmen Electra……….Queen Margo
Ken Davitian……….Xerxes
Kevin Sorbo……….Captain
Diedrich Bader……….Traitoro
Method Man……….Persian Emissary
Jareb Dauplaise……….Dilio
Travis Van Winkle……….Sonio
Phil Morris……….Messenger
Meet the Spartans is not the first movie to ask if you remember that pop culture thing that happened a couple months ago, but it would be nice if it were the last. It probably pays spoof movies too much credit to even review them, after all I already reviewed 300 last March, but here I am almost a year later watching the exact same plot sprinkled with more Britney Spears and “American Idol” references. Something is supposed to be humorous about this, but it is unclear what that something is. Pop culture cannibalizes itself so quickly these days that hardly anything has the chance to even create its own identity before it becomes a mockery. What does survive beyond the initial stages of development, for example Paris Hilton’s existence, becomes such an obvious joke that the audience is merely waiting for the pop culture reference to be made.
There lies the problem with a film like Meet the Spartans, the jokes aren’t original or creative, they are merely expected ends to certain means. There are of course many builds to punchlines that end with a mention of Brangelina, Carmen Electra, or “Ugly Betty” but how will they be presented? If that is a question that keeps you up at night, then Meet the Spartans is the film for you. Otherwise there is nothing to see here, especially if you already knew that 300 was laced with latent homosexuality. A concept that comes as a shock to roughly no one. Any clever joke that Meet the Spartans has to make has already been made quicker and more effectively by “South Park” and what jokes remain were made by Date Movie and Epic Movie and Comedy Movie and Movie Movie and so on.
It is pretty pathetic to note that at least a handful of jokes have been recycled from spoof to spoof. In fact, the makers of Meet the Spartans are so lazy that they don’t bother to make jokes, they just sort of mention Borat or Spiderman 3 and let the audience fill in the blanks on what the joke should be. Honestly, how many gags are there that can be based on You Got Served or “Dancing With the Stars” anyway? These monotonous jokes are as boring to write about as they are to watch on the big screen. There is, in fact, nothing worth mentioning from Meet the Spartans as it never aspires to be more than a method of extracting six to 10 dollars from a customer’s pocket.
At least a movie such as National Lampoon’s Loaded 1 is something more than a bunch of pop culture references strung together. Spoof movies used to be somewhat more ambitious. Sure, they were never great, but at least they weren’t so insulting. When the best thing a reviewer can find to say is that Kevin Sorbo looked like he was having a good time, something is terribly wrong.
FINAL RATING (ON A SCALE OF 1-5 BUCKETS):
