Movie Review: Meet the Spartans

Life in the 21st century can be tough at times – we've got global warming, international terrorism, potential economic ruin and the continuing popularity of Mika to contend with. However, few things pose as much threat to life as we know it as the films of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

These enemies of cinema are already wanted in various American states for inflicting such so-called comedies as Date Movie and Epic Movie upon us. However, with the release of their 300 spoof Meet the Spartans, expect them to pop up as at a war crimes tribunal in the Hague anytime soon.

Of course, movie spoofs aren't a new thing, and the likes of Airplane and The Naked Gun have become comedy classics that surpass the films they were mocking. However, Meet the Spartans is the latest in a line of comedies that began with Scary Movie and can only end when the likes of Friedberg, Seltzer and the Wayans brothers are publicly hanged.

Like its predecessors, the formula that Meet the Spartans employs is to replace actual jokes with irrelevant references to recent pop culture. So we get dancing penguins, Shrek babies, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears lookalikes, plus nods to American Idol and Deal or No Deal.

But let me repeat myself here: THERE ARE NO JOKES about any of these. And if that wasn't bad enough, the evil duo behind this film don't even credit their unlucky audience with enough intelligence to get the references, and frequently choose to explain the so-called joke seconds after it has happened...

Meet the Spartans delivers vomit, farting, penguin crap and homophobic jibes in equal measure, and makes you wonder what depraved path ex-Eastenders star Sean Maguire must have taken to end up starring in a movie like this. The film actually copies 300 scene-for-scene, and given that the Frank Miller musclefest wasn't exactly short on unintentional humour itself, it becomes that rare thing – a comedy that is genuinely less funny than the movie it is spoofing.

The only good news is that the credits start rolling at the 65 minute mark, although anyone left sitting in the cinema by the end deserves to endure the ten-minute musical credit sequence that Friedberg and Seltzer use to pad out the running time.