Meet the Spartans

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Let me try a more positive approach here. Meet the Spartans was, without a doubt, the best of the 3 Seltzer/Friedberg. Sometime in the, I don't know, week or two of downtime between Epic Movie and this, they must have actually watched a real comedy or something, instead of just their trailers. Not that Meet the Spartans is funny. Not at all. It's just as devoid of laughs as their other two films. But this time, through some miracle, the film actually contains moments that are recognizable as jokes.

Not funny jokes, mind you. Still though, there are a handful of moments that aren't just awkward, forced references and actually seem to have some sort of comic premise to them. As if they realized that copying a scene from another movie and then adding a reference to another movie isn't automatically a joke. Okay, well, actually, 90% of the movie is still like that, but the other 10% is honest to goodness actual jokes that just so happen to not be funny at all.

Selzter and Friedberg hew very, very closely to the story and structure of 300, which is a wise move. This time, they actually make use of 300 as a target, specifically all the explicit macho bullshit and the implicit homo-eroticism. I can't stress enough that this movie wasn't funny at all, but at least these guys recognized something spoof-worthy in a movie and actually tried to spoof it. Again, they've improved on a technical level, this one looks even better than the last two and feels even more like a legitimate movie made by professionals. So kudos to them. It's a terrible movie, but a less terrible movie than the other two, and they are showing some sort of improvement each time out. So maybe Disaster Movie will be even slightly less terrible. And maybe if they make about 10 more movies, they'll eventually make one that's just mediocre.

Much like Alyson Hannigan in Date Movie, they've roped in a lead actor who comes off as funnier and all around better than the material. I remember Sean Maguire from Off Centre, a terrible early 00's sitcom that also happened to feature a disproportionally funny cast. On two or three occasions here he almost made my thoughtful but stern critical-analysis-frown go away. So that's something. Although I was kinda drunk at that point.

So there you have it. I can now officially call Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans three of the worst comedies of our era, instead of just unofficially calling them that. And the sad thing is, I know my pathological movie-addicted madness all too well, and eventually I'll feel compelled to see every other shitty movie these guys put out. So I can probably kiss off another 6 to 10 hours of my future life where I could have done something productive. Disaster Movie, here I come.