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Meet the Spartans, 2008
Leonidas (Sean Maguire) and his faithful captain (Kevin Sorbo) must assemble a crack team of Spartans to fend off the army of Xerxes (Ken Davitian) in this parody of 300.
Full of underwhelming and predictable jokes, this film best serves as a time capsule for the low-hanging comedic fruit of the late 2000s.
“Hey, remember pogs?!” probably best sums up the comedic prowess of this movie, which is mostly content to simply name things as 90% of the joke. It’s hard to discuss a movie like this, which primarily feels like a lesser SNL or MADTv sketch stretched to feature length runtime.
Did I find anything in this movie worthwhile? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I did laugh at the film’s parody of steamy sex scenes, culminating in the joke that Leonidas is simply bench pressing his wife (Carmen Electra). So, yeah, that’s the one joke I found funny. I did also enjoy seeing a handful of familiar faces----what’s up, Tiffany Haddish!---some of them before they hit the big time.
The film does tread lightly into the “offensive” territory that you’d expect. Kevin Sorbo gets to bust out his best blaccent. Brittany Spears is mocked for her public mental health meltdown. All of the women characters are vapid and promiscuous. And this may shock you, but there are even a few very subtle jokes about the Spartans being gay.
But it’s hard to get too worked up about a movie whose calling card isn’t being (or trying to be) edgy, but rather just laziness. You can probably anticipate the punchline to most of the jokes. When someone looks at a man and says, “He has a nice package!”, you already know that the next shot will reveal the guy literally carrying a package. A sequence where Xerxes offers to accept a surrender morphs into a parody of Deal or No Deal and . . . that’s the joke. Because, in case you didn’t know, that TV show didn’t exist back then! Comedy!
I haven’t seen the original film on which this is based, though I doubt that would make any difference. I was aware of several jokes that this film “borrowed” from other parodies, including a gag about a chastity belt and a group of men moving around without horses. The only person who comes out of this film even slightly well is Dietrich Bader, who plays the baddie Traitoro, and who sets himself apart from the rest of the cast by actually managing some decent comedic timing and physical comedy.
What wears you down in this movie isn’t just how bad the jokes are, but how often they are repeated. Though I did get a bit of a laugh from the way that characters are repeatedly sprayed with gunk (usually poop) which is just instantly gone in the next moment. There are at least three different American Idol jokes. There are three different “female celebrity isn’t wearing underwear” jokes. I also thought it was funny that the characters had to frequently name the people being parodied, because the celebrity impersonations often do not just stand on their own.
Unintentional benefit (that the film gets no credit for!): I was unable to turn off the Spanish subtitles, and thus got a fun little review of some words that I haven’t worked with in a while. (Also, dang did the subtitle writers lean into homophobic slurs that didn’t actually match what the characters were saying!).
Hey, do you guys remember America’s Next Top Model? Yeah, me too.
Meet the Spartans, 2008
Leonidas (Sean Maguire) and his faithful captain (Kevin Sorbo) must assemble a crack team of Spartans to fend off the army of Xerxes (Ken Davitian) in this parody of 300.
Full of underwhelming and predictable jokes, this film best serves as a time capsule for the low-hanging comedic fruit of the late 2000s.
“Hey, remember pogs?!” probably best sums up the comedic prowess of this movie, which is mostly content to simply name things as 90% of the joke. It’s hard to discuss a movie like this, which primarily feels like a lesser SNL or MADTv sketch stretched to feature length runtime.
Did I find anything in this movie worthwhile? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I did laugh at the film’s parody of steamy sex scenes, culminating in the joke that Leonidas is simply bench pressing his wife (Carmen Electra). So, yeah, that’s the one joke I found funny. I did also enjoy seeing a handful of familiar faces----what’s up, Tiffany Haddish!---some of them before they hit the big time.
The film does tread lightly into the “offensive” territory that you’d expect. Kevin Sorbo gets to bust out his best blaccent. Brittany Spears is mocked for her public mental health meltdown. All of the women characters are vapid and promiscuous. And this may shock you, but there are even a few very subtle jokes about the Spartans being gay.
But it’s hard to get too worked up about a movie whose calling card isn’t being (or trying to be) edgy, but rather just laziness. You can probably anticipate the punchline to most of the jokes. When someone looks at a man and says, “He has a nice package!”, you already know that the next shot will reveal the guy literally carrying a package. A sequence where Xerxes offers to accept a surrender morphs into a parody of Deal or No Deal and . . . that’s the joke. Because, in case you didn’t know, that TV show didn’t exist back then! Comedy!
I haven’t seen the original film on which this is based, though I doubt that would make any difference. I was aware of several jokes that this film “borrowed” from other parodies, including a gag about a chastity belt and a group of men moving around without horses. The only person who comes out of this film even slightly well is Dietrich Bader, who plays the baddie Traitoro, and who sets himself apart from the rest of the cast by actually managing some decent comedic timing and physical comedy.
What wears you down in this movie isn’t just how bad the jokes are, but how often they are repeated. Though I did get a bit of a laugh from the way that characters are repeatedly sprayed with gunk (usually poop) which is just instantly gone in the next moment. There are at least three different American Idol jokes. There are three different “female celebrity isn’t wearing underwear” jokes. I also thought it was funny that the characters had to frequently name the people being parodied, because the celebrity impersonations often do not just stand on their own.
Unintentional benefit (that the film gets no credit for!): I was unable to turn off the Spanish subtitles, and thus got a fun little review of some words that I haven’t worked with in a while. (Also, dang did the subtitle writers lean into homophobic slurs that didn’t actually match what the characters were saying!).
Hey, do you guys remember America’s Next Top Model? Yeah, me too.