If it’s January, than you know it’s time for another pointless spoof from Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, two guys who seemingly have committed their lives to taking the work of other people and making fun of it rather than contributing anything original of their own. In the past, some of their “gags” may have been moderately amusing, but if Meet the Spartans proves anything it’s that we’re past that point. This is a deranged movie that takes pot shots at the undeserving and the mentally ill as well as the usual cavalcade of up to the minute pop culture references.

I fear that whatever limited success these guys have had before has just served to encourage them as they do the same jokes ad infinitum. A plot summery of Meet the Spartans is pointless because it’s more or less 300 with jokes. Sean Maguire (know pretty much only from British TV) plays Leonidas and Carmen Electra (from ?) plays Queen “Margo”. Rounding out the “all-star” cast is Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) as the Spartan Captain, Kevin Davitian (Borat) as Xerxes and Dietrich Bader (The Drew Carey Show) as Traitoro. The film is an occasionally painful 85 minutes, much of it will have you sitting there, shaking your head wondering how these people can be called comedy writers.

Let’s take a quick survey of what’s more disturbing in terms of the specifics, beginning with Seltzer and Friedberg’s disposition towards going with the gross out gag if all else fails. There are about a dozen scenes of somebody getting hit by snot or spit or whatever and what’s worse is you know the gross out gag is passé when it provokes no reaction at all. Then there are a couple of shots at Britney Spears and Anna-Nicole Smith, which I felt were in really poor taste, especially the Smith gab where Leonidas is told by an attacker to “Say ‘Hi’ to Anna-Nicole for me.”

Just generally the whole effort was weak. Borat jokes? Really? What was that, like three years ago? At least it feels that way, and I’m also pretty sure they spoofed that already in Epic Movie last year. Also tired are American Idol jokes and in Meet the Spartans not only the judges and Ryan Seacrest get tossed but also the freaky mohawk dude from the last round, and I’ve got to tell you that when that dude made it to the final ten, Idol officially became a joke all on it’s own. And then there was a whole sequence based on “Yo Mama” jokes? What is this, 1992? It must be because one of the guys in the scene is wearing a Run DMC T-shirt rather prominently.

And if that’s not enough for you, then there are painful references to just about anything under the sun, including YouTube videos. There’s a whole sequence where the Spartans skip along, hand-in-hand to “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, which is an obvious nod to not just the glossed over homosexuality of the historical Spartans in 300 but an internet video of scenes from 300 to the tune of “It’s Raining Men”. Oh yes, there are gay jokes a plenty – surprise, surprise. When you temporarily run out of material, it’s the instant quick fix that cures all.

But what it doesn’t cure, however, is that this is a lazy, lazy effort directorially and a God awful attempt at screenwriting. I know that a lot of people thought that it was probably going to be a cake walk in the tea park in order to turn the easily spoofable 300 into a factual parody, but apparently it’s not so easy after all. Meet the Spartans should have met a competent comedy writing team.