The 2006 blockbuster 300 was neither good nor bad enough to merit a parody. And yet 2008 brought us not just one but two movies poking fun at the legend of King Leonidas and the Spartan army. There's even a third parody that starts shooting at the end of the year. Attention, filmmakers: Spoofing a box office winner does not mean your movie will top the charts, too. 305 is a good example: An unlucky few (including myself) will see this painfully unfunny mockumentary in theaters before it goes straight to the DVD shelf (literally next week), where it belongs and will hopefully disappear after no one rents it.
305 is one of those movies that'll make you wonder how such a horrible piece of work even made it past the planning stages. The 5 in the title refers to the five main characters in the film, who are apparently the out-of-shape, inadequate Spartans assigned to guard a goat path. Har, har. One day, these five decide they want to leave the goat path to join King Leonidas in the war against the Persians. What could go wrong? Nobody cares about the goat path, right? Wrong. Leaving the goat path unguarded apparently allows the Persians to break through King Leonidas' army's defenses, ultimately leading to the deaths of all 300 Spartans. Whoops.
What's sadder than this half-baked premise is the repeated, feeble attempts the movie's script makes at humor. There's a character named Testicles, pronounced testiclee s (Brandon Tyra). Hyuck, hyuck. There's a four-eyed dweeb named Darryl (David Schultz) who blatantly tries to steal the personality of Dwight from The Office -- and fails miserably. The other three aren't worth mentioning, because there isn't anything noteworthy about their names or idiosyncrasies. Wooing Testicles is a hot chick named Aurillia (Heaven Peabody), some eye candy to distract you from the movie's idiotically drab humor.
I wanted to laugh at this movie, but I couldn't. Even if the directors were in the audience, I couldn't give them a pity giggle. It's really just depressing, because the movie and its actors try so hard. And as horrible as the script is, these actors, all amateurs, aren't going to go on a power trip and start improvising their own lines to make the movie better. You can't help but feel sorry for them.
Remember A Clockwork Orange? The painfulness of watching 305 brings back memories of that scene in Orange where Alex's eyes are forced open with metal prongs, and he sits through hours of watching horrible films -- as part of a program to cure him of evil. If someone remade Orange today, 305 would be the movie Alex has to watch over and over. Except to give this remake a new angle, Alex would be a horrible filmmaker rather than an evil criminal. And after watching 305 over and over again with his eyes pried open, he'd walk out a new man aspiring to make movies with more original, less stupid ideas.
We've got another 300 spoof coming our way in 2009 titled 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas. Judging from the title alone, you can tell this is going to be another stinker. We can only pray that after the slew of negative reviews of Mee t the Spartans and 305 that someone will give 301 the axe... before it's too late.
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