My urge is to completely reprint the article by Josh Levin over at Slate as evaluates Fox’s latest release Meet the Spartans from a thinking man’s point of view. Levin deserves a medal for what he has put together, and not only because his article is solid but because he had to actually sit down and endure Meet the Spartans in order to execute it.
If you weren’t aware, the “comedic” spoof Meet the Spartans topped this past weekend’s box-office with $18.5 million, besting Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo by $300,000. I put together a pair of articles baffled at the prospect that such an obviously shit film could manage to make so much money. The first article was titled “America Proves Its Stupidity as ‘Meet the Spartans’ Wins Friday Box-Office” and the damn thing even got Dug. The next one was titled “Would You Admit To Seeing ‘Meet the Spartans’?” and while it didn’t get the almighty Digg it was read just about as much, and would you believe it…? No one owned up to seeing it.
Now we have Levin’s article at Slate pointing out the fact that not only is Meet the Spartans a bad film filled with bad gay jokes and insignificant celebrity spoofs, but with an actual running time of only 63 minutes or so he asks, “Isn’t it massive consumer fraud to charge $10.50 for a barely hour-long movie?” He even takes it a step further calling it the worst movie he has ever seen and says that directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer don’t practice the same craft as “the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it.”
If you are wondering what he believes Friedberg and Seltzer actually practice he says, “They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization’s decline under the weight of too many pop culture references.” Ahhh snap is right! I hear you sister!
Quite possibly the best part of the article is when Levin points out that the movies Friedberg and Seltzer make (Epic Movie and Date Movie included) are not actual spoofs. All they have done is take characters from other films and make them fat, gay, crude or Carmen Electra.
I remain sad that American audiences still pay to go see these movies, but, like Levin, I can’t blame Fox. Fox has somehow managed to figure out how to release crap and make money off it and they should be applauded for such an effort and I don’t blame them for continuing to release crap until America finally wises up, but I don’t think that will ever happen. Luckily, films like this need to be spaced out or people just might remember how bad the last one was, Fox knows this too. They aren’t the stupid ones, the audience is.
To read the complete article click here.
