Credits Director : Aaron Seltzer, Jason Friedberg Starring : Sean Maguire, Kevin Sorbo, Carmen Electra, Jim Piddock Our Score :

By Clint Morris

If “Date Movie” was being reluctantly strapped down to an iron mattress, and “Epic Movie” was feeling a sharpened knife cut through that first layer of skin, then “Meet the Spartans” is the equivalent of having your intestines removed with the blade and hearing them smash against a brick wall… Yes, it’s that painful.

The not-so-talented but oh-so-rich writing team - Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer- that have tricked audiences into seeing their shitty spoof movies twice now (first with the rom-com spoof “Date Movie” then with the All-blockbusters-get-it outing “Epic Movie”) return with their third – and far from final – outing. And yes, we will come…. We don’t seem to know any bloody better.

Like the shitty “Saw” sequels that have become an annual cinematic event for the dimish, the yearly piss-take-of-everything-that-came-out-the-year-before draws the common man in like Lindsay to a rehab centre – and nobody can really tell you why! (unlike rehab, you definitely don’t walk away feeling cleansed). It’s definitely not the humour (there are next to no laughs in any of these movies); it’s definitely not the performances (There’s a reason Carmen Electra hasn’t stood on a podium) and well, it’s definitely not the spot-on lampooning of films and TV (Sure, there’s one or two scenes that work – like, for instance, in “Meet the Spartans” the piss-take on loopy Britney Spears and her frightening style of child rearing) so what drug are theatre owners offering with every ticket purchased to these pieces of shit?!

“Meet the Spartans”, for all of it’s 65 minutes (I shit you not, take out the credits and it goes for just over an hour! There should be a god damn rule against making movies so short!), attempts to extract the comedy out of last year’s epic CGI hit “300”. All the obvious gags are here – the latent homosexuality, the twists on the rousing speeches, the sexy wife, the all-too-obvious traitor and of course the freakish-looking enemy (in this case, “The fat guy from Borat”, as one character announces). And then there’s the stuff that doesn’t-fit-but-we’ll-just-throw-it-in-anyway like the Paris Hilton gag, the “Grand Theft Auto” sequence, the-wife-turns-into-Venom scene , the nod to reality TV shows like “America’s Next Top Model” and “American Idol” and the intolerable and never-ending dance-off between the two fighting armies- “You Got Served” style.

Remember when spoof movies use to actually be good? Inspired? Funny? It wasn’t that long ago. Yes, “Flying High” remains the ultimate in big-screen lampoons – we still quote lines from it! Can you even remember a line from “Date Movie”? - but the Wayans’ brothers had us busting a gut with their original – I stress ‘the original’ because the sequels were about as funny as, well, “Meet the Spartans”; ironically, “Flying High” director David Zucker directed the last couple of sequels! – “Scary Movie”. It was a corker. When did the genre go from undeniably fun to intolerably painful?

There’s better way to spend 65 minutes than with the “Spartans” – like, for instance, ironing that big pile of clothes that’s been sitting on your sofa for the week.

See ya next year, y’all!