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Past Entertainment Articles. Article for the week of 2/10/08 Really Pathetic Movie Review Meet the Spartans easier to digest in small doses By, Ezra Mann (Editor and Pit of Death Advocate) Every now and again, even the wisest and highest thinkers in society need to go to the depths of stupid just to let go of a few brain cells for the sake of entertainment. The balance is being able to stop before the stupid overtakes all reason and makes smart run and hide while sobbing uncontrollably. Though my intelligence didn’t spend all night crying in the corner, my dumb quota was filled for a while after seeing Meet the Spartans. While I have seen dumber attempts at parody, this one had me laughing at one point and expecting Bruce Campbell to pop out the next. In other words I’m not going to leap to get this one on DVD, but will live to see another spoof another day. If you haven’t figured it out by now, Meet the Spartans is primarily a parody of the movie 300, with so many pop culture references they had to put several of them after the movie instead of outtakes. The story centers on Leonidas (Sean Maguire), King of the Spartans, Captain (Kevin Sorbo of Hercules fame) and a few other Spartans and their efforts to prevent being rubbed out by the Persians. While there is actually somewhat of a story going on, most of the time it felt like the jokes were a bit forced together and a bit too many. Sure, it was nice to see Britney Spears and Kevin Federline along with George W. Bush falling into a pit, but for crying out loud, some of these Hollywood personalities could be saved for another playful jab. Oh and some of the jokes were unfortunately a bit too juvenile, even for my goofy tastes. Thankfully, even when things got gross or a bit overdone I wasn’t annoyed to the point of walking out of the theater. I will say that this is not a family movie and please for the love of decency, please don’t take your kids like the people who sat behind me did. Meet the Spartans is at best a onetime viewing kind of movie or at least once in several years if you really really enjoyed it kind of thing. You might also want to avoid it if you dislike jabs at homosexuality, flatulence or enjoy watching Pat Robertson. It’s times like these that I pine for the clean and witty stylings of Mel Brooks. After watching the movie I decided that I could have waited for it until DVD, but that it was at least decent enough for a random decision. I suppose the most positive thing is that for once the actual physical sexuality was toned down to a tolerable level. The film overall was well made and the costumes were funny when they needed to be and somewhat professional the rest of the time. Certainly not the worst movie of 2008, but far from the best. In the end I walked out mostly mentally stable and give this movie two manly grunts out of five.
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