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:

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.