#75 Meet The Spartans (2008) (Colin)

I can not remember which I saw first, the incredibly daft and fast paced Airplane! or the equally daft and very clever Police Squad!  Either way, from my first experience of the spoof, I was hooked.  When I was younger, it was the visual slapstick or silliness which captured me and kept me entertained.  As I grew up it was the clever use of the English language or the subtle send ups of other movies / pop culture.

Airplane! was a spoof of the airport and airplane disaster movies of the 1970's and remains one of my firm favourites today.  Classic lines such as 'Surely you can't be serious?', 'I am serious..... and don't call me Shirley' or 'This woman has to be gotten to a hospital'. 'A hospital?  What is it?'.  'It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now', will probably make me smile every time I hear them (yes, I am actually grinning now).

The people responsible for all this funniness, were Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker and during the 80's they were really at the top of their game.  I have already mentioned Police Squad! a spoof on the cop shows of the 50's and 60's, but to this we can also add the big screen spin off, The Naked Gun, Top Secret, (a spoof on the spy films such as the James Bond movies) and Hot Shots, (a spoof of action movies such as Rambo).  Some or all of these 3 were involved in these movies and I consider them to be some of the funniest movies ever produced, (OK, maybe not Naked Gun 33/3.  The joke had worn off by then!).  And then the 90's came along and the spoof seemed to go quiet....

In 2000, Scary Movie, was released, a spoof on the horror genre which mainly sent up the 1996 movie, Scream, (ironic in that Scream was also a parody of the horror genre!).  Now I have to admit, I did quite like this film even though it was written by the Wayan brothers, who, I am not really a big fan off, (see my blog on Dungeons and Dragon if you need proof!).  However, I think they were on song with this movie and although not a classic, it's still a humorous spoof nonetheless.

Scary Movie also had other writers, notably Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.  This ties in rather nicely as they are also the writers of our next movie.  Frideberg and Seltzer seemed to have picked up the spoof baton and are churning out spoof after spoof of movies such as romcoms, natural disaster movies, vampire movies such as Twilight and coming up next year, a spoof of The Hunger Games.  With so many films released so far, I was quite surprised that I have not seen any of their other movies.  Surely for a lover of spoof films this is not right and should be remedied? Well, now I have no choice, because it's in our Top 100 worst movies list!

So have they picked up, where Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker have left off?

Surely you can't be serous..........?

#75 Meet The Spartans (2008)

Meet The Spartans is a spoof of the 2007 Frank Miller movie 300.  For those, (like me I'm afraid), who have not seen it, 300 is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae.  It focuses on King Leonidas and his Spartan army of 300 who take on the mighty Persian army of 300,000 soldiers led by the god king, Xerxes.  The Persian army suffers huge losses and Xerxes himself is injured by Leonidas, but ultimately their fight is futile and all the Spartans are killed.  The sacrifice of the 300 inspires the Spartans and demoralises the Persian army and a year later 10,000 Spartans attack the now weakened army of 30,000 Persians and the battle that follows spells the beginning of the end of the Persian army's occupation of Greece.

Meet The Spartans' plot is essentially identical.  King Leonidas (played by Sean Maguire) also raises a Spartan army against the Persians, although he can only muster 13 Spartans. This is due to a rather specific requirement of Mediterranean good looks and a 6 pack. Cue a ton of homo erotica jokes repeated ad infinitum.

Like 300, the Spartans are ultimately defeated and killed. One year on and a new Spartan army is formed and goes to battle against the Persians equipped with a blue screen. This is so thousands of Spartans can be CGI'd on to even the odds and the movie finishes on this lame gag. 

So as you can tell from this brief plot overview, there really is not a lot going on with this film. At 67 mins, it's incredibly short, (but believe me, still too long), and I can't help feeling cheated despite the fact the DVD cost me 26p from Amazon. 

Maguire gives a surprisingly good performance hamming up his role as the fearless King. Last seen by myself as Aiden from Eastenders and one failed pop career later, Maguire has good comic timing and seemed to enjoy not taking himself too seriously. One criticism is that he did seem to veer into a Sean Connery impersonation at times, but considering Connery's Spartan accent would have sounded like Connery's normal voice anyway, Maguire can be forgiven. 

Kevin Sorbo plays The Captain and it's quite obvious he is the only real actor as he stands out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the unforgettable cast. Top of the crap pile is Carmen Electra, who is Leonidas' wife and man eater Queen Margo.  She brings nothing to the movie except for something for the younger lads in the audience to recall in a more private setting. She can't act, has no comic traits and even worse, can't seem to pull off sexy in this movie. For those wondering what Electra will being doing after the acting jobs dry up, flipping burgers is probably the answer. 

The movie itself, starts well and one scene which did have me laughing, involved Leonidas training and preparing his son to become a fighter. This involves a lot of slapstick comedy and the young pretender is subjected to punches, kicks and WWE like leg drops and body slams. The slapstick is cranked up as weapons are used, each getting bigger and more absurd as the scene carries on. A chair, vase, paintball gun and chainsaw are all used in a scene reminiscent of the hysterical woman in Airplane! being slapped to calm her down and the queue of people with increasingly exaggerated weaponry waiting for their turn. 

That is where the similarity ends and soon this promising start goes flatter than a pancake whose lights have been left on overnight.  Essentially the film drags on over 2 very lengthy scenes. Firstly, at the Pit of Death and finally when they stop their journey at some unrealistic valley borrowed from the set of Lost in Space.

The Pit of Death scene starts by Leonidas throwing 2 messengers of Xerxes into the pit as an act of defiance.  However, this then shifts into throwing annoying 'celebrities' of the time into it. We start with Britney Spears, well I think it's Britney Spears, (I must mention at this point that all celebrities are impersonated......rather badly).  I only know that it's Britney Spears, for example, because she is shaving her hair off and 'Hit Me Baby, One More Time' is playing in the background.

The next trio of celebrities are Randy Jackson, Paula Adbul and Simon Cowell.  Again at least I think it is as they look, sound and act nothing like them.  The only clue I have is that they are all sat in front of a massive 'American Idol' sign.  (All of the impressions are awful and most of them do not even look like the person they are supposed to be.  Paris Hilton, for instance, I only got because Maguire went up to her and said, 'Paris Hilton?').  I get what they were trying to do here, wouldn't it be great if we could also chuck annoying celebrities into the pit of death?  Well yes it would, but this scene really does not work and it's just dragging on now.

It also marks the beginning of the major problem with this movie.  The total over-reliance in trying to show the audience how cool and tuned in the writers are, by constantly throwing in reference after reference of pop culture, circa 2008.

The Pit of Death bit sort of works as it ties in with the story and the next part when they go to see the Oracle who turns out to be 'Ugly Betty', sort of works too in that at least we are still following a linear path.  But then we get stuck at the valley of bad set design and the references get chucked in and everything just becomes a jumbled mess.

We start off with the judges from 'Dancing With The Stars' given scores for a really long and protracted dance off scene, which then goes into a spoof of the Budweiser ads, (Here's to you, real men of genius), then the US version of Deal or No Deal is spoofed.  We go on with Spiderman 3, Toy Story, Borat, America's Next Top Model, Rambo, Rocky, Transformers and for some unknown reason, Ghost Rider.  I mean Ghost bloody Rider, seriously, if you feel the need to spoof this movie then you really are scraping the bottom of an already, by now, see through barrel.

By the time we get to a very poorly done recreation of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I just wanted to grab Friedberg and Seltzer by the collar and shout, 'I fucking get it, you are aware of a lot of things which are currently going on in pop culture.  Now try to write some decent fucking gags to go with it.'.  They didn't.

So do Friedberg and Seltzer pick up the baton from Abrahams et al?  Yes they do, in much the same way that the Great British 4 x 400 relay team picks up the baton.  They make a false start, drop the baton and then fuck things up.  The problem is that they are lazy writers and if you are going to spoof something, you have to be clever with it.  It's simply not good enough to throw a load of spoofing into a movie if there are no good send ups or interesting observations of how a particular thing can be lampooned.  You have to be better than the thing you are spoofing, otherwise you just look like a poor version of the actual thing you are trying to spoof.  Unfortunately in this movie, they are a very poor version of the spoof genre altogether, (they are a very poor version of the spoof genre).

Friedberg and Seltzer's work appears again on our list, so I'll stop now and save some bile for later. I must admit though, the idea of having to watch another movie from these idiots just makes me feel so down.  In fact, I'm feeling really depressed.

Readers voice: Depressed, what is it?

Colin: it's a mental condition whereby a person feels incredibly low and unable to cope. But that's not important right now.