“Meet the Spartans” a blatant parody cash-in

The movie “300” was more than ripe for parody, being both widely recognizable and by and large respected for its action and unusual style. The parody market provides the best example of why rushing a product to market to capitalize on a recently released film may not be the best strategy for quality. The lead actor is a pretty decent King Leonides, Kevin Sorbo (TV’s “Hercules”) puts in a solid performance as his second-in-command, and when the material sticks to swords and sandals humor or jokes closely tied to the source material, “Meet the Spartans” actually works as a decent comedy. However, the too frequent use of contemporary humor - including four different reality tv shows, three spoiled rich girls, two superheroes, and a Shrek baby - completely ruins whatever legitimacy “Meet the Spartans” was trying to achieve.

The movie is an almost scene-by-scene re-hash of “300”, including the pit scene, the visit to see the oracle, the meeting with Xerxes, and the battles with the Persian army. There is abundant humor to be mined from this material, as we know the peace envoy is going to get kicked into the pit, so the building anticipation for the line “this is Sparta!” creates a great opportunity for humor. The filmmakers do capitalize on some of this, with a lot of fun being poked at how hyper-masculine the Spartans are. Jokes relating to the super-ripped abs, the overly friendly behavior between the soldiers, and the lead up to the slow-mo battles have some laugh-inducing subtlety.

The rest of the comedic material is blatant cash-in on last year’s biggest films and the recent trend of reality television competition shows. Seeing the panel of judges for American Idol suddenly appear in the background and interact with the characters is jarring and painfully unfunny. These moments are awkwardly forced into the film, detracting from the story-related humor that was actually working. When Xerxes - the main badguy - randomly turns into a Transformer in the final battle, I was more than ready to throw the towel in on this movie. Overlooking its core audience and trying to reference too much unrelated material to appeal to non-fans of “300“, “Meet the Spartans” can’t pull itself out of the parody film rut.

Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language and some comic violence.