20 2000s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today
8. Meet the Spartans (2008)
The noughties did a thriving trade in spoof comedies aimed at recent blockbusters and pop culture, all thanks to the success of the Wayans’ Scary Movie in 2000. But while there were many imitators, few of the subsequent films in this genre came anywhere close to that already middling first offering.
By 2008, Scary Movie writers-turned-directing duo Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer had built a career on passable parody films, and when they dropped Meet the Spartans, comedy fans were hopefully optimistic. Built around the plot of 300, the movie exclusively stars B- and C-list actors, and takes lazy potshots at a scattershot of other films and popular culture, including Rocky, American Idol, Ugly Betty, Ghost Rider, Paris Hilton, and Brangelina. But the picture fails to build the structure necessary for a good parody, with the script reading like a first draft and the acting improv, at best.
The more of these films the system spat out, the worse they got, with Spartans representing a turning point in public sentiment, beginning the gradual shunning of parody features that ensured their rapid decline. The next decade all but killed off the genre, with Meet the Spartans being one of the last major titles and one of the worst. While there’s still a sliver of space for a well-crafted parody today, the Meet the Spartans breed is dead and buried.