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Meet the Spartans

A humorless turd

By TOM MEEK | January 30, 2008

0.5 Stars

MEET THE SPARTANS: Or not.

The steam has at last run out on the Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer movie-spoofing machine — not that said machine was ever going gangbusters to begin with. Friedberg and Seltzer are the duo who got their fingerprints on the Scary, Date, and Epic movies, but this new one’s the blandest and least inspired to date. For a straight-up rip of 300, the best the filmmakers can do is throw out fistfuls of homosexual innuendo and cut away to send-ups of TV reality and game shows — American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and Deal or No Deal, to name a few. Even Ken Davitian (the hairy, roly-poly manager whom we saw a lot more than we wanted to in Borat) as Xerxes and Nicole Parker as a hunchbacked Paris Hilton (she can’t bow but will bend over) come up empty. As Queen Margo, Carmen Electra bravely pushes her increasingly vapid sex-kitten act and poor Sean Maguire bears the brunt of this humorless turd as King Leonidas. 84 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Chestnut Hill + suburbs

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[ 02/18 ] 20th Annual Cajun & Zydeco Mardi Gras Ball @ Rhodes-On-the-Pawtuxet

[ 02/18 ] "Dana Levin: A Classical Realist In the 21st Century," an exhibit of paintings @ Bert Gallery

[ 02/18 ] A screening of Andy Warhol's Sleep @ RK Projects + Magic Lantern Cinema

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