Posted: Tuesday 5th August 2008

Leonidas (Sean Maguire) is the leader of the Spartans. Following threats from Xerxes (Ken Davitian), Leonidas leads an army of 13 to battle to defend their honour. Meanwhile Leonidas’ wife Margo (Carmen Electra) tries to convince the people of Sparta to help her husband in his crusade. Along the way the Spartan army encounter many famous faces and find themselves thrust into popular culture.

Meet The Spartans is aiming to replicate the success of movies such as the Scary Movie series and Epic Movie. It took over $84 million dollars across the world at the box-office and beat Rambo to the top spot in the US. Despite its theatrical success, Meet The Spartans isn’t a particularly good movie. We were expecting it to be ridiculous and very silly but we didn’t expect it to be so poor. The movie relies far too heavily on popular culture references rather than parody. The majority of the movie is based on 300 but it does manage to poke fun at Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, Dancing With The Stars and a host of other celebrities.

The main problem with Meet The Spartans is that the jokes are far too obvious and predictable. The targets it chooses have been ridiculed so much elsewhere that this movie doesn’t really add anything to the plate. The only exception to this a rather clever parody of the computer game Grand Theft Auto which did manage to raise a chuckle.

Cast wise, not a great deal of acting was actually required from the cast. Former Eastenders’ star Sean Maguire leads the cast and he manages to impersonate Gerard Butler, complete with muddled access pretty well. Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) does his usual straight performance whilst Carmen Electra may as well be playing herself as the slutty Margo.

Extras on the Blu-ray version of the movie include a cast and crew commentary, several featurettes, a selection of trailers and a trivia game.

Meet The Spartans is sure to appeal to the teenage market but for anyone above the age of 15 this is pretty stupid stuff. What could have been a pretty funny movie instead ends up being a bit dull and not at all funny. This isn’t the worst movie we’ve ever seen but it would likely appear in our Top 10. In all fairness the end sequence is quite funny but that’s mostly due to a nod to Britney Spears’ disastrous MTV appearance from 2007. There are worse ways to spend time but don’t make this your first pick for a comedy movie.