Cast: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Diedrich Bader, Ken Davitian, Method Man, Nicole Parker, Kevin Sorbo

Category: Comedy, War

To briefly state the flimsiest of plots, we follow the Spartan King Leonidas (‘we won’t get sued, you say? Okay then, we’ll stick with Leonidas’) as he leads a group of misfit soldiers defending their homeland against the invading Persians. Obviously plagiarizing the visually epic 300, this film cares less about constructing a cohesive (or even logical) plot than it does about inserting an avalanche of pop culture references into every situation possible.

Whenever the term ‘gratuitous’ is used to describe a film, it is usually in order to criticize the excessive action, which has inevitably let down the overall appeal of a film. In this case, the excess is in relation to the directors’ efforts to take a jab at every aspect of popular culture, from Michael Bay to Britney Spears, from Ugly Betty to Shrek.

Uniquely, the poor form shown in this area does not detract from the rest of the film, solely because the references are the only point of the film. There are no progressive plot points, no efforts to invoke character development, and certainly no originality in the screenplay. The allusions are about as relevant as they are funny. In fact, they frequently flirt dangerously with the line of insulting the viewer’s intelligence, regardless of how seriously you take your films.

Anybody familiar with my reviewing style will know that, while I never hesitate to throw down my opinion on any film, I ultimately leave the decision up to the reader; simply offering a guide on how to critically approach the movie in question, and always accepting of other people’s opinions, even if we can’t agree. This is especially the case when critiquing a comedy: the most subjective of all movie genres.

I cannot offer any of my fellow film connoisseurs that sort of leeway with Meet The Spartans. Nothing about this film came even close to forcing a mere chuckle out of me, let alone matching its advertising campaign as a light-hearted laugh riot. The best example of my rage towards this film is the running time. At just over sixty minutes long, it appears that even the writer/director combination of Friedberg and Seltzer gave up after realizing they had squeezed the entire pop culture landscape dry, and decided to end the film when they couldn’t think of anything screen-worthy to occupy the next half-hour.

Seriously, the outstanding benefit of the American Writer’s Strike was the fact that these two did not go near a keyboard for a precious few months. Just to clarify for those of you still in two minds, I despise this film with a passion; to this day, I still consider it the single worst film in history. The only thing keeping it from scoring a big, fat, satisfying zero? The site won’t let me.

1/10.

Author Bio: Johnny Hollywood

One day, a good friend started calling me Hollywood because of my never-ending desire to talk about films, and the nickname stuck like glue. There’s only one thing I love more than reviewing movies, and that’s discussing them with everybody and anybody, so never hesitate to tell me what you think about my work.