TheMovieStory

Meet the Spartans is a 2008 parody film produced and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Similar to past movies, such as Scary Movie, along with its spin-offs Epic Movie and Date Movie, it pokes fun at various movies in a juvenile manner. Although it references many movies, TV shows, people and pop cultural events, it focuses mainly on the film 300. Its title itself is based on the movies Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. The film is rated PG-13 in the US and 15 in the UK for crude and sexual “humor” throughout, language, and some comic violence.

Plot

The film opens with a Spartan elder inspecting a baby which resembles Shrek, he then proceeds to kiss it as the narrator paraphrases the words of Dilios about the Spartan selectiveness of their citizens. The baby vomits on the inspector and is then rejected and punted off the hill. With the next baby in hand, the narrator says if it is Vietnamese, Brangelina gets first dibs. Baby Leonidas is then inspected, having a six-pack, biceps, and beard from birth. He is accepted as a Spartan and prepared for his kinghood through his childhood training, from fighting his grandmother to enduring James Bond-style torture. Leonidas (Sean Maguire) is then cast out into the wild, and survives the harsh winter while killing a giant penguin.

Returning a king for his inauguration ceremony, Leonidas sees Margo (Carmen Electra) dancing and asks her to marry him, to which she responds by giving him the combination to her chastity belt. The film then fast forwards to where the story begins, opening with Leonidas training his son, until Captain (Kevin Sorbo) informs him that a Persian messenger (bling and all) has arrived.

The messenger has come to present Xerxes’ demands for Sparta’s submission. Leonidas arrives to greet the messenger in the Spartan way (high-fives for the women and open mouth tongue kisses for the men). After growing angry with the messenger’s disrespect, Leonidas kicks him, the messenger’s bodyguards, and then several other people he just plain disliked, ranging from Britney Spears (Nicole Parker) and Kevin Federline (Nick Steele) to Sanjaya Malakar (Tony Yalda) (who proceeds to say “I’m not gay” on his way down) and the American Idol judges (who don’t like his style) and Ryan Seacrest (who throws himself) into “The Pit of Death”. As Leonidas walks off he turns to a column, that has a switch that reads “Garbage Disposal”, and flips the switch causing the celebrities to spiral to their “death”.

Resolving to face the Persians, Leonidas visits the Oracle, proposing an “erotic-sounding” strategy to repel the numerically superior enemy after offering the priests various skin-care lotions for guidance. The Oracle, Ugly Betty (Crista Flanagan), says some well-known lines as in “Save the cheerleader, save the world” from Heroes and “Douchebag says what” Leonidas responding with a “What?” Then, the Oracle reveals that Leonidas will die should he go to war.

That night, Leonidas and Margo then decide to have sex before Leonidas heads out (which in fact is just Leonidas bench pressing his wife one hundred times). Leonidas then goes out to meet the soldiers collected for his departure, and finds that only 13 (not 300) were accepted in the army, since there were stringent specifications to be accepted (one of which having a Mediterranean tan). Three among them included Captain, his son (Sonio), and a slightly unfit Spartan named Dilio. Sonio is then nominated as Sparta’s Next Top Warrior.

The 13 hold hands and skip behind Leonidas to Thermopylae, where they meet hunchback Paris Hilton (also played by Parker), whom they rejected from joining their army due to her mild deformities.

Leonidas and his platoon soon face off with Xerxes’ messenger and his Immortals, beating them in a dance contest (similar to the male-performed cheer dances in Stomp the Yard) before driving them off a cliff. Xerxes (Ken Davitian), impressed, personally approaches Leonidas and attempts to bribe him in a Deal or No Deal fashion. Despite the soldiers encouragements, the Spartan king declines, saying that he will instead make the “God King” fall. The Spartans then face the Xerxes army in a “Yo Momma” fight, ending with a victory in spite of Dilio having his eyes scratched out.

Though victory seemed to be in the Spartans’ grasp, Paris Hilton betrays the Spartans and reveals the location of the goat path to Xerxes, having been promised her hump removed among her various demands. Using a CGI army, Xerxes meets the 12 remaining Spartans and the war is on.

Meanwhile, back in Sparta, Queen Margo sexually submits to Traitoro to persuade him to send more troops to assist Leonidas. To which he repiles that he will finally lose his virginity while using his cell phone to take pictures. However, he reveals publicly that she has not been chaste - the anger at this revelation provokes a Symbiote Spider-Man suit to envelop her (mirroring the ‘evil’ Symbiote Spider-Man suit in Spider-Man 3) and she fights with Traitoro (who, in line with the parody, becomes the Spider-Man 3 villain the Sandman). Margo wins the battle with a vacuum cleaner - and Traitoro’s treachery is revealed, whereupon Sparta agrees to send more troops.

However, the Spartan decision to send troops comes too late, as Xerxes and the Persian army get ready to fight against the 12 Spartans, who refuse to retreat. The battle initially starts well for the Spartans (with increasingly silly fighting techniques) but the tide turns as the Persians introduce their secret weapons: Ghost Rider (who is quickly defeated) and Rocky (who kills Sonio but gets killed by the Captain). The Captain then gets killed by a spear, thrown by Xerxes.

The rage at his Captain’s death riles Leonidas, and the battle sequence switches to a GTA format as he runs through the Persian Army and corners Xerxes. While running away, Xerxes finds the Allspark (from Transformers) and harnesses its power to combine with a convertible and turn into “Xerxestron” (a parody of Megatron), playing both the Rick Roll and “Leave Britney Alone” videos to prove his “godly power”. But “Xerxestron” ends up delivering on Leonidas’s promise to “fall”, as his power cord disconnects and he falls forward, crushing the surviving Spartans under his bulk. Thus the narrator concludes “And just as Leonidas promised, the God King Xerxes did fall–but unfortunately right on top of them!”

The blind Dilio, who left prior to the final battle, eventually returns to Sparta to tell of Leonidas’ final moments. A year later, Dilio leads a force of 100 real Spartans and several thousand more CGI ones to defeat the Persians, but the blind warrior ends up going the wrong way and leads the Spartans to Malibu. They end up crashing into Lindsay Lohan while she was coming out of rehab (again), causing her to expose her bare crotch as she flies off screen.

The film ends with a musical number set to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” performed on American Idol by all of the characters in the film. It also spoofs Britney Spears’ VMA’s comeback performance. As the credits start rolling, it is followed by additional scenes not shown in the movie.

Cast

• Sean Maguire as King Leonidas - 300
• Ken Davitian as Xerxes - 300 / Transformers / Borat
• Carmen Electra as Queen Margo - 300 / Dennis Rodman / Spider Man 3
• Kevin Sorbo as Captain - 300
• Jareb Dauplaise as Dilio - 300
• Travis Van Winkle as Sonio - Accepted
• Diedrich Bader as Traitoro - 300 / Spider-Man 3
• Hunter Clary as Leo Jr. - 300
• Phil Morris as Messenger - 300
• Method Man as Persian Emissary - 300
• Nicole Parker as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres and Paula Abdul - Extra, MADtv, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and American Idol
• Ryan Fraley as Jack Black
• Zachary Dylan Smith as Little Leonidas
• Tiffany Claus as Angelina Jolie
• Nick Steele as Kevin Federline - Date Movie
• Ike Barinholtz as Bond Villain, Prophet, Dane Cook (in extended version)
• Tony Yalda as Sanjaya Malakar - American Idol
• Christopher Lett as Randy Jackson - American Idol
• Crista Flanagan as Oracle/Ugly Betty - Ugly Betty / 300 / The Matrix
• Jesse Lewis IV as Ms. Jay Alexander - America’s Next Top Model
• Jenny Costa as Tyra Banks - America’s Next Top Model
• Belinda Waymouth as Twiggy - America’s Next Top Model
• Dean Cochran as Rocky Balboa
• Emily Wilson as Lindsay Lohan
• John Di Domenico as Jack Thompson

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