I Met the Spartans ... so that you don't have to

Friday, Brian took a look at trailers for this weekend's Meet the Spartans and wondered if the 300-inspired parody would follow the homophobic tone of its inspiration or manage to mock it.

Since the Scary Movie films are a guilty pleasure of mine and I'm always eager to see the machismo of Frank Miller (who wrote and drew the graphic novel that 300 was based on) get mocked, I decided to see Meet the Spartans and judge it for myself. Sadly, after seeing the movie, I think judging Meet the Spartans as homophobic or subversive is giving it a little to much credit. Spartans is a directionless and poorly paced gag-fest (some of the weakest parodies get way too much screen time and there are too many moments waiting for something funny to happen). It bludgeons every joke to death, seemingly because the script wasn't long enough to withstand any selective editing.

I wanted to give Meet the Spartans the benefit of the doubt; the film makes use of a few Mad TV vets like Ike Barinholtz and Nicole Parker, who gave us some great gay-themed comedy sketches. (Parker's spot-on imitations are easily the best thing about Meet the Spartans, aside from the constant beefcake, which, sadly, isn't saying much considering how infrequently she appears.) Finding a promotional clip for the movie where Kevin Sorbo, Ken Davitian and Diedrich Bader talk with Carrie Keagan about women finding male/male sexuality hot, without a hint of cringing or squeamishness.

NSFW language in the clip below:

A lot of the gags in Meet the Spartans play heavily to gay stereotypes. When the Persian Emissary (Method Man) first looks around Sparta, he sees male couples standing together in steamy poses. Xerxes' (Davitian) "high five" gesture leaves the Spartans laughing for being a bit limp-wristed. When the Spartans march in formation, they hold hands and skip merrily while singing "I Will Survive" together. When the Captain (Sorbo) presents the army to Sean Maguire's Leonidas, it turns out that Leonidas has demanded soldiers who were "hunky with deep Mediterranean tans, hot bods and ... well endowed".

In a Grand Theft Auto parody, Leonidas changes the car radio to a station playing Aqua's "Barbie Girl" and begins singing along to the "Ken" part. (When did "Barbie Girl" overtake "It's Raining Men" as the gay song?) I kept wondering during these gags what exactly the audience was meant to laugh at: was it a gag that "sissies are ridiculous," or a bitchy response to the way 300 straight-washed the Spartans' history of gay relationships? Eventually, I decided the intent doesn't matter since Meet the Spartans left room for homophobic audiences to laugh at a bunch of silly fairies, if that's the joke that they wanted to hear.

Meet the Spartans also has plenty of gross-out humor, including one bit where audiences are meant to go "Ewww!" at the hint of gay male sexuality when Leonidas greets the Persian Emissary with an open-mouthed kiss. It's possible to use two guys kissing for gross-out humor without a homophobic tone (Talladega Nights, The Kids in the Hall and The Office have accomplished that) but Meet the Spartans doesn't have that kind of subtle touch and it's not aimed at an audience that can separate the two. More gross-out humor is employed when guy's face comes close to another guy's crotch ... it's all stuff seen before in other movies (Borat, for example), but with all the gay jokes there's a very different tone to the humor.

Still, Meet the Spartans had a couple redeeming moments. At one point, the movie turns into a parody of the Budweiser's "Real Men of Genius" ads, labeling Leonidas "Mr. Warmongering Latent Homosexual", a moment that's unquestionably mocks the way 300 tried so hard to overlook it's homoerotic qualities. Additionally, when Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone" video appears, the joke is one of Meet the Spartans' subtler moments. (We're talking subtle in a relative sense.) It starts as a Transformers parody, when Xerxes turns a car into a robot with a TV screen on its chest. When the screen starts playing Crocker's notorious video, the Spartans are enthralled with the technology (unlike in the Spartans trailer where they laugh at Crocker). The joke is more about the trivial ways we use technology (Xerxes talks up the power of his robot, which it turns out simply has the ability to play YouTube clips) than a mocking of Crocker's effeminacy. (Extra points for turning the chance to mock the misplaced priorities Crocker displays in his "Leave Britney Alone" video into a greater gag about our societal priorities.)

Oh, and one other redeeming feature of Meet the Spartans: Travis Van Winkle (on the far left).

As I mentioned earlier, Meet the Spartans is just too much of a mess to find as a homophobic follow-up or a clever tweak on 300. Some of the gags are clever, some of the gags could go either way, and some gags could play to an audience's homophobia ... but most of the humor falls flat and Spartans, overall, lacks a strong enough voice one way or another. Were any AfterElton readers among those who made Meet the Spartans the #1 box office draw this weekend? What did you think?