Jason Friedberg
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The Basics: It's 300.
This spoof of 300 takes aim at the homoerotic vibe exuded by the ancient-Greece epic while anachronistically lampooning Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and a raft of other pop culture notables.
Now, less than a month into 2008, we have Meet the Spartans -- a spoof of a movie, 300, that only opened last March.
Enter Meet the Spartans, a parody of the popular film 300, taking the entire plot and adding into pop culture references worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit.
Meet the Spartans (20th Century Fox), the latest spoof from Scary Movie/Date Movie/Epic Movie auteurs Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, begins with King Leonidas from 300 getting crapped on by a dancing penguin who exclaims, "I'm about to make you my bitch!"
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
Directed by David Zucker
influenced Meet the Spartans (2008)
Visuals
…and The Naked Gun—are characterized by their facility with the tone and detail work of genre films and their genius combination of straight-faced B-movie actors with lowbrow punch lines and sight gags.
The film features Jayma Mays, Adam Campbell, Kal Penn ("Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle") and Faune A. Chambers ("White Chicks") as, of all things, 20-something "orphans" who are plucked out of scenes from "The Da Vinci Code," "X-Men" and "Snakes on a Plane."
Some of the targets are not technically epics: Snakes on a Plane?
Epic Movie, the latest plunge into the bottomless sewer of spinoffs from the original Scary Movie razzfest of 2000, makes fun of Nacho Libre, Snakes on a Plane, Scarface, Click, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Borat, among many others.
The plot is a misshapen amalgam of films like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , The Chronicles of Narnia and The Da Vinci Code , but whenever those zany screenwriters ( Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg ) get stuck coming up with another flaccid gag, they have no problem yanking "inspiration" from Nacho Libre , Snakes on a Plane , X-Men , Mission Impossible and Click .
Having spoofed horror films and romantic comedies, Friedberg and Seltzer satirize mostly summer blockbusters - among them "The Da Vinci Code," "Nacho Libre," "Snakes on a Plane," "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and the "Harry Potter" films.
Susan (Faune A. Chambers) is menaced by Snakes on a Plane.
Mel Brooks perfected the form in the '70s with pictures like High Anxiety (a Hitchcock spoof), Silent Movie (silent era spoof), and Young Frankenstein (figure it out for yourself).
Mel Brooks perfected the form in the '70s with pictures like High Anxiety (a Hitchcock spoof), Silent Movie (silent era spoof), and Young Frankenstein (figure it out for yourself).
While movies like Airplane!, Hot Shots and Naked Gun were hugely popular in their days, their type was not seen as frequently on the big screen.
As Bryan Curtis has pointed out in Slate , the spoofs of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker—the team behind Airplane!
Mel Brooks perfected the form in the '70s with pictures like High Anxiety (a Hitchcock spoof), Silent Movie (silent era spoof), and Young Frankenstein (figure it out for yourself).
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)
Directed by Michael Jelenic
influenced by Epic Movie (2007)
Themes
…that’s basically the same principle as the woeful Friedberg and Seltzer parody movies (Epic Movie, Date Movie and so on), and those moments are similarly laugh-free here.
It’s not enough, for example, to have a Sylvester Stallone impersonator show up as Rocky Balboa, they cut to an insert of the name “Rocky” stitched into his boxing shorts to make sure we understand.
It's another opus that, despite opening titles done in the style of Armageddon 's and a feeble thru-line borrowed from Cloverfield (mixed with some of The Day After Tomorrow ), is as much a send-up of disaster-related films as Epic Movie was a spoof of actual epic movies.
Big question: Is the latest spoof from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (“Meet the Spartans,” “Epic Movie,” “Date Movie”) even slightly better than the garbage they’ve done before?
One day after Obama stirred the nation with his DNC speech in Denver, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (the hacks behind Date Movie and Epic Movie) unleashed their second witless rehash of pop culture references this year (after February’s Meet the Spartans), one featuring a black “comedian” by the name of G. Thang.
Instead writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer do what they’ve done in Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Meet the Spartans, spoof big movies and other miscellaneous popular culture from the last six to twelve months regardless of how it fits into the overall title concept.
The latest "effort" from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the guys responsible for Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans, is yet another bottom-feeding cash-grab that exploits current events, ridicules pop culture icons and compromises the integrity of the zeitgeist itself in order to create, oh, one-quarter to one-half of a funny joke within the shortest possible time frame that qualifies as a theatrical release.
When Jennifer Coolidge first appears as the White Bitch, one character references her role in American Pie by exclaiming: “Whoa – Stifler’s mom!” When someone else mentions White Castle, Kal Penn (he of Harold and Kumar fame) says he feels like he’s been there before.
(The role played by Jennifer Coolidge in American Pie.)
For yours truly, it's just more of the same old, same old (that even got spoofed a few years back in the awful parody "Meet the Spartans") that still takes itself far too seriously without fully accepting the campy romp it so desperately wants to be.
That they’ve succeeded is commendable, there are only a few self-aware nods that distract us, but the result is like watching one of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg rightly vilified movies such as Epic Movie, Date Movie , or Meet The Spartans, but without as many scenes of characters being kicked in the balls.
Vampires Suck (2010)
Directed by Aaron Seltzer
influenced by Epic Movie (2007), Meet the Spartans (2008)
It was only a matter of time until Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the writing-directing duo responsible for a parade of genre film parodies from “Date Movie’’ to “Meet the Spartans,’’ turned their attention to the “Twilight’’ franchise.
That's because writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer worked with the Wayans before striking out on their own to write screenplays for "Date Movie" (which received a 6 percent rotten rating from Rotten Tomatoes); "Epic Movie" (2 percent rotten rating); "Meet the Spartans" (another 2 percent rotten rating); and "Disaster Movie" (you guessed it--another 2 percent rotten rating).
After their cancerous 2008 effort, “Disaster Movie,” I honestly thought that would be the end of filmmakers Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, two poisonously unfunny fellows who personally suffocated the parody genre with lethal features such as “Epic Movie,” “Date Movie,” and “Meet the Spartans.”
Having lampooned the horror genre (Scary Movie), rom-coms (Date Movie) and even the film 300 (Meet the Spartans), the directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer turn their attentions to the Twilight saga with Vampires Suck.
They wrote the original Scary Movie (2000) and directed Date Movie (2006), Epic Movie (2007), Meet the Spartans (2008) and Disaster Movie (also 2008).
After a 30-month span in which they released "Date Movie," "Epic Movie," "Meet the Spartans," and "Disaster Movie" , they were silent.
Meet the Spartans (20th Century Fox), the latest spoof from Scary Movie/Date Movie/Epic Movie auteurs Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, begins with King Leonidas from 300 getting crapped on by a dancing penguin who exclaims, "I'm about to make you my bitch!"
Turning the task over to Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer—the auteur team who gave us Date Movie (2006) and Epic Movie (2007)—guaranteed that wouldn’t actually happen.
Or maybe it's because, after sitting through the rancid garbage that are Date Movie and Epic Movie, I simply don't have any more patience for the worthless cinematic exploits of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer .
These guys, who previously authored Date Movie and Epic Movie, are not really filmmakers.
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer continue spinning off from the Scary Movie franchise, to which they contributed on the original script, in this follow-up to Date Movie .
A few short weeks ago, I placed the spoof Date Movie on my list of the ten worst films of 2006.
House at the End of the Street (2012)
Directed by Mark Tonderai
influenced by Meet the Spartans (2008)
The similarities are there, some more overt than others (and some that should definitely go unspoken for spoiler purposes), but to compare a distaff, half-hearted genre piece like this to Hitchcock is almost like comparing " Meet the Spartans " to "Airplane!" in the annals of slapstick comedy.
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer continue spinning off from the Scary Movie franchise, to which they contributed on the original script, in this follow-up to Date Movie .
The Scary Movie series (helmed by other filmmakers) has been more successful at this type of spoof, and I’ve come to believe that the secret weapon is Anna Faris.
The perpetrators of the Scary Movie series are at it again, cannibalising Hollywood's fondest cliches in the much-abused name of satire.
Epic Movie, the latest plunge into the bottomless sewer of spinoffs from the original Scary Movie razzfest of 2000, makes fun of Nacho Libre, Snakes on a Plane, Scarface, Click, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Borat, among many others.
"Epic Movie" was directed and written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who were among the "brains" behind the similar "Scary Movie" franchise (currently in production for a fifth installment) and 2006's "Date Movie."
The ongoing efforts of filmmakers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer to destroy the spoof genre continue with Epic Movie, as the film is just as ineffective as any of the pair's previous works (including the Scary Movie series and Date Movie).
Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge, and Bad Santa's Tony Cox are among the once and future Hollywood Squares vets in supporting roles, but the biggest surprise is Crispin Glover as the film's Willy Wonka surrogate.
This is all so recent, within the last few years of social media, that it feels more like an Epic Movie spoof than a lasting commentary on the state of cinema.
Kiet’s use of choppy visual effects and the locale (seriously, this thing was filmed where they made “Meet the Spartans”) and quick jump cuts by editor Alex Fenn add insult to injury with the occasional headache.