Those of you who read Other Crap know that I became a
grandfather for the first time on Wednesday. Baby girl named Aubree. 7
lb. Everything normal.
Meet the Spartans
2008
This is another in a string of bad parodies from Jason Friedberg
and Aaron Seitzer, who co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed Date
Movie, Epic Movie and now this one.
Those are the only three movies they have
worked on in any capacity other than writing, and what a track record
it is:
- (2.70) - Date
Movie (2006)
- (2.30) - Epic
Movie (2007)
- (2.20) - Meet the
Spartans (2008)
Date Movie has somehow managed to escape
IMDb's worst 100 films of all time, but Epic Movie is #70 and Meet the
Spartans is #58.
You may have guessed from the title that Meet the Spartans is a
parody of 300, and it sticks very close to the plot outline of its
target, taking only the occasional detour to skewer a pop culture icon
or to drop a random reference from another film. Part of the problem with Meet the
Spartans, perhaps the entire problem, is that the writers only had a few
jokes, so the film is padded out with predictable repetition (yeah, we
get it, their costumes are really gay!) and overlong set pieces that
go on as long an interminably as the original film's equivalents.
While the original film was padded out with fight scenes, the parody
Spartans and Persians do very little fighting. When they finally face
off, they battle in rap contests, street dancing competitions, cheerleading
tournaments, and impromptu jousts of yo' momma
jokes, none of which contain even a modicum of originality or
entertainment value.
There are a few funny scenes here and
there, mostly at the beginning. The Persian ambassador scene is
spoiled by a bunch of cheap sex jokes, but I was laughing when King Leonidas kept drop kicking everyone and his brother into the pit of
death, including both Britney Spears and K-Fed. I also laughed a few
times at the vicious ways in which the Spartans toughened up their
young, including piledriving them WWE-style and splattering them with paintballs
at point-blank range. Unfortunately all of those jokes come in the
first few minutes. After that it's mostly gay jokes. Yawn.
The good news: Carmen Electra is dressed
scantily throughout the film, and exposed her breasts briefly.
Film clip
Collages:
Love in the time of Cholera
2007
I've reviewed this before. I liked it better the second time
around. It is a big soap opera and one of the worst-acted
major films of all time, but it has those great positives: the
beautiful location photography in Colombia, lots of beautiful naked
women, and the haunting Colombian
music (Shakira wrote three original songs for the film). This time
through I also came to appreciate the fact that the film is filled with
humor. It's not generally laugh-out-loud humor, but its presence
really lightens the load of the sappy story.
Since Charlotte Ayanna has turned me down, I wonder if I can get
Ana-Claudia Talancon to be the next Mrs Scoopy.
I've done film clips before. Here is one original one:
Angie Cepeda
in a deleted scene. She has a beautiful body but, just as in the film,
she gets naked without really showing anything.
Here are the stars:
| Marcela Mar |
|
| Laura Harring
|
 |
| Ana-Claudia Talancon |
|
| Angie Cepeda |
  |
| Giovanna Mezzogiorno |
  |
