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Funny for the first five minutes

Writer/director/producer Friedberg along with Aaron Seltzer collaborated on yet another parody film. These are the guys who brought us Scary Movie, Date Movie, and Epic Movie. This time they sent-up 300, which was ripe for satire. However, the scenario has a few laughs in between the tedious dead zones. Indeed, Friedberg and Seltzer failed to maintain a continuous laugh level through the entire running time. Instead, they orchestrated a series of lame skits, spoofing a legion of pop culture celebrities, including Britney Spears, Donald Trump, Dr. Phil, Tom Cruise, J-Lo, and “Brangelina.” They also satirized a host of popular films such as, Transformers, Shrek, Spiderman, and Happy Feet.
In Friedberg and Seltzer’s vision of Sparta, Leonid, clad in a leather Speedo, leads his group of 13 (not 300) gay Spartans to defend the homeland against the invading Persians. The men kiss each other on the lips and the women high five each other. The goofy Spartans skip, not march, into battle and have dance contests against the enemy. This is not the Sparta we learned about in history class. Nonetheless, any popular TV show or celebrity gets roasted with several crotch shots of Britney and Lindsey, blurred out of course.
The film becomes a wish fulfillment fantasy as tabloid stars are pushed into the Pit of Death, including Britney Spears, Dane Cook, Ellen Degeneres, and many others. When the first couple of celebs are sent to the Pit of Death, it was funny, but the joke got old quickly. A Paris Hilton look-a-like ended up being the Spartan traitor who told the Persians where the secret pass is located so they can out flank the Spartans. She sports a hump and a deformed hand. Carmen Electra plays Queen Margo, vamping around like a crack ##### and proving once and for all that she has no talent as an actress. She doesn’t even look that great anymore. Please, no more scraggly Carmen Electra roles. She has had her fifteen minutes.
After the Pit of Death scenes, the skits go downhill. Friedberg and Seltzer were reaching, desperate for funny material which didn’t happen. The thing is, the original 300 was a parody of itself with its over-the-top CGI special effects and overacting. Still in this parody genre, 300 gets skewered again, which turns out to be anticlimactic. This brings to mind how skit comedy has degenerated from the original SNL to present day SNL. It has been done to death and lost its impact. Years ago, during the opening of Second City TV, people threw their television sets off the balcony, which reflected the sorry state of that era’s television programming. Now, televison has surpassed films in quality writing. No one would toss their expensive flat screen TV off the balcony. Likewise, movie parodies are cliché. It’s just not funny anymore.
Overall, this movie has nothing to offer that hasn’t already been done on You Tube. In fact, You Tube’s favorite transgender performer, Chris Crocker, has one of the funny bits in this film doing his ‘Crying for Britney’ video. Parodies seem to work much better in the short format of You Tube. Yeah, it’s funny for two minutes and then the audience gets bored. A feature length film parody is way beyond the Internet generation’s short attention span. Meet the Spartans falls flat after the first five minutes.