Negative 300
posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 in Movie Reviews
Hollywood hates us. Or at the very least, they don’t respect our intelligence. How else can you explain Meet the Spartans, the latest in a string of poorly made, unfunny parodies looking to cash in on the popularity of some recent hit? A totally classless affair, Meet the Spartans may stand as proof positive of the contempt that certain Hollywood studios have for their audiences. The film is supposed to be a parody of 300, and more or less follows the same plotline. Spartan King Leonidas leads a small regiment of soldiers to meet the unbeatable Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae. Take that plotline, and insert a bunch of meaningless pop culture references and scatological humor, and you’ve got the basic outline of the film.
300 was a movie full of ridiculous excesses, and was thus ripe for parody. And when this film pokes fun at its source, it’s actually kind of funny. But moments like these are far and few in between. Majority of this film is reserved for two things: pop culture references and product placements. There aren’t even really any jokes in most the scenes. They rely solely on the quirk factor of seeing some familiar showbiz face or fictional character show up in the setting. It’s really pretty baffling.
It’s like “hey, it’s Britney Spears! She’s a bad mother!” Or “look at Paris Hilton! She’s the hunchback!” Or “it’s Ghost Rider! He does not belong in this setting!” Why is this supposed to be funny, really? It feels like all they did was check the top search items in Google and stick them in the script at random. This is best illustrated by the part of the film where they show the “Leave Britney Alone” video. They seriously just stuck the very same Youtube video in the movie, because if it was funny on the internet, it should be funny in the film. And they don’t even trust the audience to recognize the references by themselves, often spelling out exactly what they were showing as if the audience were a bunch of 2 year-olds who’ve never been outside before. It’s headache-inducing to say the least.
There isn’t really much to say about the cast. I don’t think we can make any judgments about their acting ability based on anything we see them do in this film. Sean Maguire looks genuinely enthused by his role as Leonidas, but the script is so absolutely devoid of value that he mostly comes off as a complete tool. The rest of the cast seems to realize that the film isn’t much of a project, and don’t really offer much in their performances.
At one point in this film, King Leonidas, faced with certain death, is told to “say hello to Anna Nicole for me.” What class. That’s the kind of tastelessness and just sheer idiocy that this film fully exhibits. It just about epitomizes everything that people have come to hate about Hollywood. It’s obvious that the parody movie is long dead, with true comedic intent overridden by purely corporate motives. Skip this movie. Rent Spaceballs instead.
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