Meet The Spartans – Unrated Pit Of Death Edition (2007/Fox Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B+ Extras: D Film: D
Making
for a good tax write-off, the Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer (it took two
writer/directors to make this mess???) Meet
The Spartans – Unrated Pit Of Death Edition (2007) is yet another tired
throw-in-any-joke-about-any-recent-film spoof compendium without a laugh in
site and that these keep getting made is a very sad statement on the bankrupt
state of creativity in Hollywood just because they want to play it safe and not
spend money (or take risks) on new ideas.
Carmen
Elektra is back as “the girl” in a mess that thinks it is sending up everything
from 300 to Meet The Fockers to anything else they can throw in. Inspired by the Airplane!/Naked Gun
approach, which itself was from Mel Brooks’ ideas of sending up film genres,
but the problem here is not a single, coherent narrative. Woody Allen’s Take The Money & Run (1969!) proves you can do such a film and
make it work. Instead, a smug sense of
“phony funny” and general laziness plagues these films, which are a plague on
filmmaking, i.e., imagine how many better films get shelved so garbage like
this can get he greenlight.
Fortunately,
even the big studios like Fox know this is meant to go to the video shelf and
these disasters have been getting poor promotion because it is as much a waste
of money as making these hack jobs as pushing them to a bored, tired of garbage
public. Of all the films and comedies
Fox could put on Blu-ray, this is not the best they could do to make a very
major understatement.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 AVC @ 22 MBPS digital High Definition image looks like it was shot in
HD and has a soft, phony look throughout.
Color is odd as a result and this does more harm than good in selling
the benefits of the Blu-ray format. The
DTS HD Master Audio (MA) lossless 5.1 mix is loud, bombastic, punchy and lacks
character, but the makers made sure their film at least it had good sonics… to
keep the viewer awake? Sometimes you wonder
if a characterless sound mix like this is sponsored by Excedrin. Either way, music, sound effects and dialogue
are dumb, but that is typical of these films.
Extras
(yes, they made some) include a gag reel, trailers, trivia track, two games,
two featurettes and even a pointless audio commentary. But then these formula fests are pointless
and for a smart producer like Arnon Milchan, the nadir of his career.
Let’s not
have any meetings like this again!
- Nicholas Sheffo
