#75 Meet The Spartans (Wes)

Meet The Spartans

Oh joy. After having the pain of watching An Underground Comedy Movie we have another comedy to enjoy. Meet The Spartans is a spoof movie based around the story of 300, Frank Miller’s epic tale of the Battle of Thermopylae, where King Leonidas led 300 Spartans against an invading Persian army. As parodies go, I really wasn’t sure there’d be enough to mock in the historical war genre to make this a worthwhile movie. Was I right? Of course I was.

Leonidas (Sean Maguire) is trained from birth to be the king of the Spartans until he is eventually cast out into the wilderness to survive not only a harsh winter, but also a dancing penguin. Having survived he takes his place as king. He marries Margo (Carmen Electra) and they have a son who he then starts to train to become the future king. Whilst this is happening he is informed by Captain (Kevin Sorbo) of the arrival of a Persian messenger, who comes with the demands of the Persian king Xerxes (Ken Davitian) for Sparta’s surrender. Leonidas kicks the messenger into the Pit of Death, along with his guards, the judges of American Idol, Britney Spears (Nicole Parker) and several other people. Having decided to go to war with Persia, Leonidas gathers his army of Spartan warriors, who only number 13 due to the strict requirements for joining (“Hunky, with deep Mediterranean tans, hot bods and well-endowed"). At the Hot Gates they meet Paris Hilton (Nicole Parker again), who is horribly deformed, who tells them of a secret goat path above the Hot Gates. Leonidas rejects her wish to join his army and they soon face the first of Xerxes troops, whom they beat in a dance off. Paris Hilton eventually betrays the Spartans to Xerxes, and a mass battle between the two opposing armies ensues.

However just when you think this diabolical movie is over, another six minutes is inexplicably added post credits. None of this expands the story though, and just seems to be scenes that weren’t deemed good enough to be in the actual movie itself (and that really is saying something). They include George Bush jr. Tom Cruise and Ellen DeGeneres (Nicole Parker strikes back) being kicked into the Pit of Death, the Spartans celebrating with Hooters girls and Donald Trump firing Spider-Man in The Apprentice!

Everything about this movie that I was apprehensive about came true. In the past when spoof movies were made they’d be written with either terrible jokes that you just couldn’t help but laugh at (Airplane, The Naked Gun) or would be filled with brilliant references to genre specific films (Spaceballs). Now it seems that writers have so little imagination or skill they have to fill these films out with pop culture references that have absolutely nothing to do with the story itself. For example, Xerxes secret weapons in his army are Ghost Rider and Rocky Balboa. It’s almost as though the people writing these are less interested in making an audience laugh, and just want to prove how aware of pop culture they are. If any further proof of this is needed, there are also pointless references to Transformers, Grand Theft Auto and Ugly Betty.

I’m ashamed to say that I actually laughed a little at some of these at the beginning of the movie. When Leonidas is born, he is the third baby. The first is a talking ogre baby (Shrek 3) and the second is Vietnamese, which is adopted by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Next up is a parody of Casino Royale and then there’s a Happy Feet fight with a gangsta penguin. Unfortunately this is where the laughter stopped and the film descended into its expected blandness.

Many of the jokes in this movie revolve around the homo-erotic nature of these gladiatorial style movies. Twice in the movie the Spartans skip into battle singing I Will Survive. It’s as though the writers (Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer – who also directed) couldn’t be bothered to think of more than one gag, and thought that nobody would realise that they were recycling the same joke over and over again. In fact they do this a lot in the movie. The kicking people into the Pit of Death joke is so long and overplayed, that what could have been slightly amusing, descends quickly into the joke version of a relative that comes for breakfast, but stays until Christmas.

 

As far as the acting goes, Kevin Sorbo seems sorely wasted in this role as does Sean Maguire, both of whom actually seem to have good comic acting in them, perhaps with a little better writing they could actually made something of this movie. Carmen Elektra however has never been particularly good in anything I’ve ever seen her in, so her one-dimensional performance here came of no surprise.

Meet The`Spartans is a lame duck in a world where spoofing genres in movies and on TV has become a lot more intelligent. It dumbs down its jokes to a level where it’s just insulting to the movie watching populace and really shows how little some movie-makers think of its audience. I can’t see how this could amuse even the biggest lover of spoofs in anyway, and would urge you just to dig out your Mel Brooks or Jim Abrahams DVDs to remember the days when writers actually understood how to make somebody laugh.