Meet the Spartans

Celebrity status often comes with a cost and for those who've been overexposed in the media. One reward (or punishment) is being spoofed in a Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer teen flick. Chuck full of star parodies, the tag team who brought viewers films like Date Movie, Scary Movie and Epic Movie has a new offering lampooning the bloody battle blockbuster 300 and scores of other pop culture fads.

Leonidas (Sean Maguire) is the king of the Spartans who greets his male guests with passionate, full-mouthed kisses and readies his son for manhood by violently beating him. Under threat from the encroaching Persians, the monarch's sexually provocative and unfaithful Queen (Carmen Electra) spurs him into taking the offensive. So despite the grim warnings of the Spartan oracle (Crista Flanagan), he and the Captain (Kevin Sorbo) lead a dozen or so skipping, handholding troops into a tedious and sometimes bloody battle against Xerxes (Ken Davitian) and his soldiers. Slashing their way through their foes, they also employ a drug-filled syringe, step dancing and shock talk as weapons on the confined battlefield.

However, the story is a mere sidebar in a script that is constantly interrupted with famous look-alikes, television parodies and commercial breaks. Beer brands, sandwich shops, and web sites are among the products plugged in random fashion throughout this film that, like its predecessors, drags snippets of recent theatrical releases on to the screen.

Along with violence, the movie is swamped with crude sexual humor, buttock nudity, anatomically altered males and frequent, offensive homosexual jokes. Banal bathroom comedy and derogatory remarks are packed in alongside profanities and an obviously bleeped sexual expletive.

With little plot to tie this hodgepodge of clips and cameos together, the steady barrage of coarse content often feels more like a torture treatment than entertainment. After sitting through more than an hour of this raw humor, I can think of at least 300 reasons not to Meet the Spartans.