Out at the Movies: Meet the Spartans ... or not

Today the 300 parody Meet the Spartans opens in theatres everywhere. Don't pretend you're not excited.

Of course, given the fact that Spartans is spoofing the homophoberotic nipple opera that took the world by storm last March, we figured that it would feature gay jokes of some kind: it could either blindly follow the implicit homophobia of the source film and pile on the gay jokes (while simultaneously being a film carried by a bunch of men hanging out together in thongs), or - if we were lucky - it could smartly lampoon the homophobic choices made in 300 and feature proudly gay and masculine characters or mock the origin's skewed take on masculinity and sexuality.

We can't say for sure which (if either) will happen, because the film didn't screen for critics (Really? Noooooo....). But from the looks of these gay-joke-packed ads - which feature everything from a rooster-headed Sanjaya lookalike screaming "I'm not gaaaaaaaaay!" as he's kicked into a pit to the Spartans laughing at Chris Crocker to a cross-dressing Rambo (?!!), we shouldn't really get our hopes up. Not that there was much chance of that happening in the first place.

Will actor Sean Maguire, who played a gay character in the short-lived sitcom The Class, undo any goodwill he had with gay audiences by starring in this mess? It's a shame to see a man in a leather Speedo go to waste, but "class" is something that this project could used a bit more of.

Check out two of the ads here and here.