Meet the Spartans (2008)

People are voting emotionally.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Fantastic!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I haven't watched 300 prior to this and I don't think it was necessary either, with most of the jokes being about modern day celebrities, sex puns and poop. Did I say jokes? I suppose they were made to be funny, but the only way my lips moved was into a frown. In the first part of the movie there's a scene that sets the expectations for the rest of the movie. Leonidas is trying to survive in the wild when he meets a talking penguin that attacks him, poops on him and makes Leonidas lick ... Just no. The pooping is painful enough to remember. The only thing that was funny was when they painted the abs on with color. Because that was one of the few jokes that had no modern day reference. The rest of the jokes feels like leftovers from a spoof about celebrities, there was no reason for them to be in the setting of 300.

After sitting through "Date Movie", "Epic Movie", "Disaster Movie" and "Vampires Suck", it has become beyond obvious that the duo of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg deserve every criticism they have received. Their films are unfunny, unintelligent and unbelievably painful. There's nothing I can say about them that would make their work any more entertaining or any less stupid. So what do I think of their "300" spoof "Meet the Spartans?" Well..."Meet the Spartans" is Seltzer and Friedberg's best movie by FAR. Guess what? It still sucks. What saves "Meet the Spartans"...Okay, um...Maybe "saves" is the wrong word. Uh...Anyways, what makes "Meet the Spartans" better and funnier than any other Seltzer and Friedberg film is that it has an EXCELLENT comedic cast. All of the actors chosen in this film seem to be chosen because they actually fit the roles and have tons of comedic presence instead of merely being chosen for star power. Kevin Sorbo has some very funny moments, Ken Davitian of "Borat" has good comedic presence and I actually found the whole concept of Diedrich Bader's character "Traitero" (A clever and actually really funny jab at action movies which make it incredibly obvious who the villain is the moment he or she steps on screen) quite humorous. That said, Sean Maguire gives by far the best comedic performance in the movie. This guy is given a script that gives him almost NO comedic possibilities and can truly turn out some hilarious moments. There are multiple scenes in this movie that would have completely and utterly failed in any actor's hands but his own. Seeing all these actors trying so hard to make this movie work despite such an atrocious script not only makes me like all of them more, it makes me hate Seltzer and Friedberg more for not utilizing their obvious talents better.The biggest problem with Seltzer and Friedberg is that they don't view their movies as actual "films" per say as much as giant feature length comedic skits. Like all of their movies, "Meet the Spartans" suffers from this problem. Because of this, the film literally doesn't go 20 seconds without a joke. Joke after joke after joke is launched at the audience, and many of them feel rushed and without effort. It was like Seltzer and Friedberg just wrote down the first jokes that came into their minds without reading them over, fleshing them out or even double checking if they fit into context. And the toilet humor...Dear God, the toilet humor. The toilet humor here is so stunningly unfunny it could sink even an otherwise excellent comedy.And if the toilet humor doesn't hurt your intelligence, then the constant pop culture references out of left field most certainly will. Apparently, Seltzer and Friedberg are people who think that a Spartan elder inspecting a baby Shrek is funny. No context by the way, the elder just inspects a baby and it happens to be Shrek, complete with a Scottish accent. If the film is extra cruel, it will combine its toilet humor and reference humor into some of the most unfunny scenes in the movie (I cringed HARD when a cat took a crap on Traitero's face after he randomly turned into Sandman)Like I implied earlier, there ARE funny scenes in this movie, saved by strong comedic performances rather than an even remotely intelligent script. The "Deal or No Deal" parody, Leonidas speaking to the Prophets about his unintentionally homo-erotic battle strategy and Xerces revealing his blue screen as a secret weapon to create more soldiers are all legitimately funny scenes. Easily the funniest scenes I've ever watched in a Seltzer and Friedberg movie, but that's really not saying anything at all.So yeah, "Meet the Spartans" is a terrible comedy. For most directors, this would easily be the worst thing they ever created. But for Seltzer and Friedberg, this is pretty much their magnum opus, and almost certainly the best you're ever gonna get from these two morons. At the very least it only made me cringe a few times, whereas I cringed pretty much every 30 seconds at "Date Movie" or "Disaster Movie."

I think most of the reviews of this film are WAY harsh. It's a farce, for chrissakes! A broad, bawdy romp that riffs on every scene in "The 300," from which it was derived. Incidentally, not to see the original "300" would make watching this film a colossal waste of your time, for this same reason. I thought the star of the film who portrayed Leonitus, Sean MaGuire, was a spot-on, dead ringer for the original, and funny as hell. One the negative side, some of the gags in this movie tended to go on a little too long to sustain the laugh, but many of the scenes in this movie I thought were hilarious, just dying to be spoofed. Again, this isn't Ben Hur, nor was it meant to be. Lighten up folks, and enjoy.

This is another movie spoofing a host of movies, most notably 300, where Spartan King Leonidas, armed with only leather underwear and a cape, leads 13 misfit warriors to defend their homeland against the invading Persians, which include Ghost Rider, Rocky Balboa, the Autobots, a hunchbacked Paris Hilton and a shaved-head Brittany Spears.To me, it was just a lot of forced, weird comedy consisting of crude jokes and overly-done effects. A lot of the gags and spoofs were just mentioned and quick references, not really emphasized; I would have liked to see Brad Pitt and Angelique Jolie's characters spoofed more. Kevin Zorbo was funny, though, and I liked how they portrayed the look-alikes.The overall story was pretty boring and the film lacked the direction and spirit of the better spoof films like the Zucker Brothers' Airplane!, Top Secret!, the Naked Gun movies and the Scary Movie films. Those were real, truly funny spoof films that you should really go watch, versus this one.Grade D-