Review: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

Reviews

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

Related: Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, More

Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Media, Television, More

| More

view all

[ 02/19 ] Bubonic Bear + Banned Books + Ultra//Negative + Death Cloud + Heavy Breathing @ 131 Washington

[ 02/19 ] Circle Mirror Transformation @ Theater Project

[ 02/19 ] Jozef van Wissem + Robbie Lee + Arborea @ The Oak and The Ax

ARTICLES BY TOM MEEK

REVIEW: UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING | January 24, 2012
The Underworld series got long in the tooth early, but here, in the fourth installment (directed by Swede Måns Mårlind), it grows new fangs.

REVIEW: JOYFUL NOISE | January 10, 2012
There's not much joy but there's plenty of noise of the rafter-rocking gospel singing variety in Tony Graff's musical dramedy.

REVIEW: IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY | January 05, 2012
Jolie has loosely reworked the story of Romeo and Juliet in an infamous setting familiar from CNN but here seen from the inside.

REVIEW: ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED | December 13, 2011
For 50 years, Alvin and the Chipmunks have been driving parents nuts with their helium-infused banter and shrill bastardizations of pop music.

REVIEW: TRESPASS | October 13, 2011
If Rod Lurie's errant remake of Straw Dogs didn't tickle your morbid fear of home invasion, then perhaps the latest from Joel Schumacher ( Falling Down ) might do the job.