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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Imagine releasing Meet the Spartans before 300 even hit theaters.
As much as Walk Hard owed a lot to Walk the Line, it never lifted scenes and shots directly the way that Spartans does to 300.
But they’re quick and cheap to produce, can be cast with unknown actors, and take aim and low-hanging fruit, which is why we too often wind up with dimwitted, subpar send ups like Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, and others of that ilk.
These guys destroyed spoof movies in the 2000s with such terrible flicks as “Meet the Spartans,” “Disaster Movie” and “Epic Movie.”
In Meet the Spartans, the mere act of referring to Transformers, Happy Feet, Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, Rocky Balboa, Stomp the Yard, Shrek, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Federline, or Deal or No Deal is presumed to be hilarious.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Directed by Jay Roach
influenced Meet the Spartans (2008)
With the success of Scary Movie and Austin Powers, the genre has seen a resurgence that has resulted in an influx of new spoofs this decade.
Besides 300, there are plenty of scenes satirizing other big Hollywood films, such as Casino Royale, Stomp the Yard, and Spider-Man 3. Reality shows and game shows are also parodied.
In Meet the Spartans, the mere act of referring to Transformers, Happy Feet, Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, Rocky Balboa, Stomp the Yard, Shrek, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Federline, or Deal or No Deal is presumed to be hilarious.
When Carmen Electra transforms into evil Spider-Man from Spider-Man 3, the narrator has to tell us, “just like Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3.” An “Ugly Betty” clone is dutifully identified as such for the pop-culture challenged—as are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, a tap-dancing penguin from Happy Feet, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan etc.
In Meet the Spartans, the mere act of referring to Transformers, Happy Feet, Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, Rocky Balboa, Stomp the Yard, Shrek, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Federline, or Deal or No Deal is presumed to be hilarious.
For those who care to pay attention to limp comedy fodder that will hold little to no meaning in about a year's time, I'll inform you that Meet the Spartans aims to steal some pennies by referencing films like 300, Shrek, Borat, Ghost Rider and Transformers.
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.
A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)
Directed by Seth MacFarlane
influenced by Meet the Spartans (2008)
Just ask anyone who has endured one of those awful Seltzer-Friedberg genre spoofs, such as "Date Movie," "Epic Movie," "Meet the Spartans" and "The Starving Games."
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.