Meet the Spartans

Comments (0) By Aaron Hillis Tuesday, Jan 22 2008

Details

Meet the Spartans
Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
20th Century Fox, now playing

More About

Mike Judge predicted this bullshit would happen in his dystopian satire Idiocracy, in which Americans had become so dumb that the multiplex headliner was something called Ass: just two hours of a naked, farting rump. Depressingly, he was off by about 500 years. Here and now, the writing-directing team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (see also: Date Movie, Epic Movie) water down their own blend of pop-comic diarrhea in this witless, tasteless, formless spoof of 300's homoerotic box-office warriors. So infuriatingly lazy that its leads don't even earn Mad Magazine–clever nicknames, the movie pits King Leonidas (Sean Maguire) and his chest-waxed army of 13 against pierced Persian Xerxes (Ken Davitian), stopping every 30 seconds to make random media references from 2006 through summer 2007: Heroes, Britney's vagina, Ugly Betty, Paris's vagina, Spider-Man 3, Lindsay's vagina, repeat ad nauseam. Carmen Electra proves herself a national treasure as our highest-priced whore, Kevin Sorbo makes a Herculean fool of himself, testicles are bitten, penguins defecate, the countless man-on-man gags land every time with a "gay is gross" eww response, at least six corporate products are placed—and, at its most offensive, a death cry of "Say hello to Anna Nicole." I'm moving to Europe.