Written by Pedrastro del Diablo

There's terrible and then there's godawful.

Meet The Spartans surpasses both of those into a horrendous unnamable realm of unwatchable pain and suffering. Some might argue the whole parody genre was never good, but I have a feeling after the Zucker brothers decided to step out for awhile the decline of these types of movies has been drastic. There might have been moments here and there where a movie of this genre would come along and produce some laughs (I'll admit I find some things from Not Another Teen Movie funny), but Meet The Spartans has no redeemable quality whatsoever and laughs are nowhere to be found.

Meet The Spartans is basically a parody of the film 300. They follow the same storyline (or rather series of events), but plugged in are a series of unfunny pop-culture references and homophobic jokes sure to keep any pop-collared frat boy rolling on the floor for days. Any and every pop-culture reference from the past year and half is basically used in this movie. In fact, it's all the movie is. It's lazy and extremely unfunny. It's copy and paste comedy that delivers nothing but groans and cricket noises. Within the first minute of this movie you know it will possible be the worst movie you have ever seen.

Any and every easy joke you can think of from pop culture is used. Britney Spears, Shrek, penguins, James Bond, and American Idol are just a few to name (sprinkled with the obvious pratfalls and crotch hits), and that's just within the first 10 minutes of the film. In fact, every reality show you can think of that's still on the air, especially shows about judging "talent," is "parodied" in this movie. There is even a scene where the Spartans jaunt off to battle singing "I Will Survive". Get it?! A gay joke! I was tying a noose for myself as soon as it came on.

Rather than make a cohesive film with somewhat of a storyline to work in these jokes and references, they just use the skeleton of an outline of 300 and drop in references and gags that don't fit in at all. At least with a movie like Airplane or Top Secret, they took a movie or a genre and created a story that almost strangely pays homage to the films they're parodying while still working in jokes we all know and love. I'm not saying to ground it completely, these movies are meant to be cartoonishly ridiculous, but at least make it work within the realm they've created rather than just making references for the sake of referencing anything to do with pop culture. Most of the time is taken up with the references rather than any kind of story. There's a Stomp The Yard/You Got Served scene that goes on for about 10 minutes and shortly after a "dis competition" (also known as Snaps) that lasts almost for the same amount of time. That's nearly 20 minutes just on two jokes that lose steam before the first second is even done.