Meet The Spartans (Blu-ray)

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Audio:

The audio portion of "Meet the Spartans" is also quite good. The film uses a DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio mix to deliver the film to the home theater room and this is routine for Fox. The mix uses the .1 LFE channel effectively and a great number of directional sounds can be heard in the rear surrounds as well as the parodied musical score by Christopher Lennertz (which may be the best element of the film). Sound bounces from channel to channel smoothly and naturally. Dialogue is anchored effectively in the center channel and you´ll unfortunately never have a problem hearing every word of the lame jokes. This isn´t an overly powerful mix, but it works well within the confines of the film. French and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 surround mixes are also provided as well as English and Spanish subtitles.

Extras:

There are a few supplements contained with the Unrated Pit-of-Death Edition of "Meet the Spartans." The question is not to whether or not they are decent extras, but whether or not you think you can sit through more of this mess. The ´Unrated´ version of the film is still very PG-13 in nature and you won´t see anything that particularly pushes the boundaries of the MPAA rating system. I didn´t watch the theatrical version of the film, so I honestly cannot tell you what pieces of additional material were thrown into the film. There are some pixilated-out genital regions of parodies of Paris and Lindsey shown in the film, but that was as racy as it got.

As far as the features, the Audio Commentary by Cast and Crew includes those responsible for this travesty (Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer, Sean Maguire, Kevin Sorbo and others). I couldn´t stomach more than a few more minutes of this film and this commentary and while the group seem to get along well and enjoy talking to one-another, it doesn´t make for a particularly good commentary track. The Know Your Spartans Pop Culture- Trivia Game is an interactive game that rewards answers with clips from the film, which is Leonidas kicking somebody into the death pit. I suppose one could call this exciting. Meet the Spartans: The Music allows the viewer to instantly select one of eight scenes in the film featuring music.

The features don´t improve much after the interactive elements and commentary. The Prepare for Thrusting Featurette (5:11) is a making-of vignette that uses film clips and short interview segments to advertise the film. The only interesting comment was Kevin Sorbo claiming he could kick the 300´s ass. Tour the Set with Ike Barinholtz (6:37) had the guy that poorly portrayed Dane Cook giving a tour of the film´s sets. This was perhaps the best supplement offered, but it wasn´t an easy watch. A Gag Reel (4:16) had a few laughs and was racier than anything in the film. In fact, there was foul language that would almost earn the disc the ´Unrated Pit-of-Death Edition´ moniker.

The Celebrity Kick Off Game and Super Pit of Death – Ultimate Tactical Battle Challenge are two more interactive features that are best avoided. The Celebrity Kick Off has Leonidas booting annoying celebrities into the pit of death and the faux American Idol judges rating the kick. It is simplistic and silly. The Super Pit of Death game is another ´Kick the Celebrity into the Pit´ experience and it is getting a little bit old at this point. A Trivial Track is included that places pop ups onto the film with mundane bits of information. Finally, the Theatrical Trailer A and Theatrical Trailer B are included.

Closing:

I didn´t like "Meet the Spartans" in the least and I have my doubts that there are many people out there that would enjoy this film. It is a mish-mash of poorly written parodies and pop culture references force-fed into a script strongly based upon the film "300." There is hardly anything the film does that is funny and about the best joke in the entire film was watching the first thirty seconds of Kevin Sorbo going "Hercules" on the bad guys. This is quite simply one of the worst films I have ever seen. Sound and Video are actually quite good and a few supplements are tossed in to try and give some reason to purchase this film, but don´t get pulled in with their trickery. Pretty much every other Blu-ray release out there is a better purchase than this film.

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