Column:

‘Spartans’ is a disgusting parody

By Tanner Boyd

Published Jan. 29, 2008

“Meet the Spartans” is less of a movie and more of a muddled, 84-minute collage of half-brained pop culture references. The references themselves are mostly overused, from Paris Hilton to “American Idol.” Instead of creatively parodying the movies and celebrities, writers/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer limit 90 percent of the content to crotch shots and bodily fluids.

Much like Friedberg and Seltzer’s “Epic Movie” and “Date Movie,” which preceded “Meet the Spartans,” Seltzer and Friedberg used the creative process to the extent of grabbing headlines from Us Weekly and straining to place them in some kind of feasible plot. “Meet the Spartans” is valuable only to garner, “Hey, I saw that movie!” from its audience members. What results is a jumbled, incoherent look at the life and times of 2006-2007, a pop culture period that hardly deserves to be cinematically remembered.

Of all the movies that “Meet the Spartans” parodies, it hardly hits some of the bigger, more popular movies. Seltzer and Friedberg don’t even touch Judd Apatow, producer of “Superbad” and “Knocked Up,” perhaps cowering from his comedic dominance over them. It would have at least been worth the $6.50 to see the directors’ take on “Knocked Up.”

Besides relying on society’s love/hate relationship with Britney, the filmmakers also use “300”’s homoerotic undertones as a crutch for “Meet the Spartans,” beating a dead horse to the point of being both ridiculous and offensive.

The parody genre is perhaps going the way of the dodo. While I would hardly consider the “Naked Gun” series as an example of comedic genius, it at least offered something more than middle school humor and jokes at the expense of the gay community.

Similarly, Apatow’s “Walk Hard” isn’t perfect, but it at least allowed for creative elements and branded John C. Reilly’s acting skills. “Meet the Spartans” must rely on the acting “chops” of Kevin Sorbo and Carmen Electra.

“Meet the Spartans” truly personifies terrible. Only one month into 2008 and we have already been greeted with one of the worst. While most bad movies can at least garner laughs for being absurd, “Meet the Spartans” is in a group all its own. I’ve never cringed in a comedy before until seeing “Meet the Spartans.” In a world where “Arrested Development” gets canceled and “Mind of Mencia” is unfortunately on the air, we’re left dealing with Seltzer and Friedberg’s food stamp budget cinema. As I sat in the cinema watching the fat guy from “Borat” pop a hump on Paris Hilton’s back, I realized that this isn’t Sparta; it’s mediocrity.