Meet the Spartans (2008)

From the writing team who brought us films like Date Movie and Epic Movie comes yet another movie full of parodies of other movies, as well as countless pop culture references intended to make you laugh. But does it achieve its intentions? Unfortunately not, in my opinion.

King Leonidas (Sean Maguire) lives quite happily with his wife Queen Margo (Carmen Electra) in his kingdom of Sparta.

Until one day, he receives word that Xerxes (Ken Davitian), god-king of the Persian Empire, intends to take his kingdom along with all the others he is already ruling.

But Leonidas won't stand for this. He takes all the strong, good-looking Spartan soldiers he can find (unfortunately only thirteen of them), including his Captain (Kevin Sorbo), to make a final stand against the numerous armies of Persia and defend his kingdom.

Perhaps the plot sounds familiar. If you said it sounds like the film 300, you'd be right. You see, each of these films (from writers/directors Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer) is generally a parody of one particular film (in this case, 300), filled with parodies of other movies and a large smattering of popular culture references.

But where their other films have achieved this to a reasonable standard, this film is lacking in almost every facet.

In fact, the only thing I enjoyed about this movie was the 82-minute running time. That's right, the only redeeming feature of the entire film is the fact that it's over in under an hour and a half.

Well, okay, perhaps the production design isn't too bad. William A. Elliott has done a reasonable job of making the sets look incredibly realistic. However, I don't think that that's necessarily enough to make up for the script.

Sure, neither Date Movie nor Epic Movie were ever going to scoop the pools at the Academy Awards, but I still found them reasonably enjoyable. I realise I haven't seen them for a while, but as far as I can remember, they both had scripts that were much cleverer in their parody. But with this film, I can count the number of times I laughed on one hand. Not only that, but I had to watch the film twice through, after falling asleep the first time.

The cast seem oblivious to the fact that the script is terrible, as they still try to give it their all. Kevin Sorbo and Sean Maguire are both fully committed to their roles, despite the fact that their characters are so badly written.

I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending this film to anyone, unless it was someone I disliked very strongly.

2 out of 10.