Meet the Spartans
2008 · Directed by Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer
Original language: English
- comedy
- fantasy
The story
The heroic Leonidas, armed with nothing but leather underwear and a cape, leads a ragtag group of thirteen Spartans to defend their homeland against the invading Persians (whose ranks include Ghost Rider, Rocky Balboa, the Transformers, and a hunchbacked Paris Hilton). No one is safe when the Spartans take on the biggest icons in pop culture!
What it’s like
Bright, flat, overlit studio comedy: lurid colour, sets that look like a cheap soundstage, and a camera that simply points at the gags and holds. Pacing is relentless and sketch-like, one pop-culture joke stacked on the next with little breathing room, and the score leans on mock-epic brass and bombastic battle drums that get undercut by slapstick stings and sudden record-scratch silences. The mood is loud, goofy and deliberately tacky, the kind of thing that feels like channel-surfing a bad late-night parody reel. It suits a lazy Friday night with friends, a group watch where people shout the references, or a background half-laugh while folding laundry. Violence is cartoonishly staged, with plenty of mock swordplay and bodies flung about, but no real gore; sexual content is crude, jokey and frequent, including bare-skin gags and innuendo. Best for people who want mindless, unapologetically juvenile spoof humour and don't mind the jokes falling flat as often as they land.
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