Funny 300 Review (No Spoilers)

[Bearsan]

Link: http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0710,lee,75993,20.html

Long ago there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans. They lived beneath a copper-colored sky, on a copper-colored land, amidst copper-colored fields, in copper-colored homes made from copper-colored stone. Legend has it they would outline their copper-colored pecs and abs with ash to enhance their manly buffness, and yet these were men of action and honor, not "philosophers and boy lovers" like their namby-pamby rivals the Athenians.
Lunatic machismo was cultivated early. From the age of seven, Spartan boys were trained in the art of humorlessness, and made to beat each other into submission. Little is known of the Spartan women, but scholars assume they were fierce.

Spartans were men of few words. They spoke in a language composed almost entirely of monosyllabic stupidities. In that strange time, among those strange people, a voice rang out perpetually from the heavens. No one knows who spoke it, but historians agree that this holy text was silly and repetitive and devoted by and large to what they now term "the totally butch awesomeness" of Spartan deed. History remembers their ethos: "Only the hard and strong may call himself Spartan. Only the hard. The strong." It remembers their war cry: "For honor's sake, for duty's sake, for glory's sake, we march. We march." And the immortal words of their fateful end: "We are undone! Undone, I tell you!"

Such magnificent verbiage was memorialized by Frank Miller, and incorporated into the text of 300, his graphic novel retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which the titular quantity of Spartan studs fended off a billion gazillion Persian invaders. Marshalling the full resources of high-end computer imaging and the full capacities of hardcore fanboy nerditude, writer-director Zack Snyder (he of the unexpectedly decent Dawn of the Dead remake) has now brought Miller's book to "life."

Slathering pancake make-up on its actors then pasting them into digital backgrounds, 300 takes the synthetic blockbuster one step closer to total animation; its bland, weightless monochromatics make Sin City look like the grungiest neo-realism. It's a ponderous, plodding, visually dull picture, but the blame shouldn't be put on Snyder's skills per se, and has nothing to do with his ambition to blur the distinction between CGI and photography. Frankly, it's the slavish, frame-by-frame devotion to Miller's source material that's the problem. That explains both the risible screenplay and why the movie, for all its liberation from the real world, never takes full-winged flight into its own peculiar universe. Bogged down by respect for Miller's medium—he's almost as faithful to 300 as Gus Van Sant was to Psycho—Snyder seems to have forgotten that where comic-book panels indicate movement, movies can actually move.

The exception to the rule of inertia comes fitfully in certain action scenes, of which there are enough to satisfy the action-buff bloodlust the film seeks to aggravate and sate. Here and there, Snyder makes good use of the lesson of The Matrix, slowing the slices, dices, and decapitations to a digitally-calibrated crawl the better to relish all 360 degrees of their stupendous ass kickery. Tolerate the lobotomized dialogue and some half-assed political intrigues and you'll find a good 10 minutes of 300 worth posting on YouTube. You can never go wrong with rampaging battle elephants. Throw in a war-rhino, some silver-masked ninja magicians, and an 8-foot-tall godking who looks like RuPaul beyond the Thunderdome (Rodrigo Santoro as Xerxes) and 300 is not without its treats.

Delicacies of dismemberment aside, 300 is notable for its outrageous sexual confusion. Here stands the Spartan king Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and his 299 buddies in nothing but leather man-panties and oiled torsos, clutching a variety of phalluses they seek to thrust in the bodies of their foes by trapping them in a small, rectum-like mountain passage called the "gates of hell(o!)" Yonder rises the Persian menace, led by the slinky, mascara'd Xerxes. When he's not flaring his nostrils at Leonidas and demanding he kneel down before his, uh, majesty, this flamboyantly pierced crypto-transsexual lounges on chinchilla throw pillows amidst a rump-shaking orgy of disfigured lesbians.

On first glance, the terms couldn't be clearer: macho white guys vs. effeminate Orientals. Yet aside from the fact that Spartans come across as pinched, pinheaded gym bunnies, it's their flesh the movie worships. Not since Beau Travail has a phalanx of meatheads received such insistent ogling. As for the threat to peace, freedom, and democracy, that filthy Persian orgy looks way more fun than sitting around watching Spartans mope while their angry children slap each other around. At once homophobic and homoerotic, 300 is finally, and hilariously, just hysterical.

[LAGUNA]

cliffs please

tl;dr

[BRP]

cliffs please

tl;dr

This is getting over done. Has BG become illiterate? You'd think "Funny 300 Review (no spoilers)" would be enough to get the idea across that reading the thing is the whole point. That's like skimming by a stand-up comic and asking "What happens at the end?".


As the for the review itself, the whole "gay" joke is a bit over-the-top.

[Saga]

cliffs please

tl;dr

This is getting over done. Has BG become illiterate? You'd think "Funny 300 Review (no spoilers)" would be enough to get the idea across that reading the thing is the whole point. That's like skimming by a stand-up comic and asking "What happens at the end?".


As the for the review itself, the whole "gay" joke is a bit over-the-top.

Yeah, in terms of humor it almost reads like a high-school newspaper movie review in the Entertainment section, except written by the opinions editor. >_>

And can someone finally tell me what tl;dr stands for?

[Rhodoc]

And can someone finally tell me what tl;dr stands for?

Too long; didn't read

[GraveRobberX]

Not being homophobic or anything

It's from the F'n Villiage Voice for fucks sake

They will spin anything to adhere to there lifestyle (gays/queers)
[Not knocking them, but seriously to a gay man 300 is an orgy of scantily dressed men with red capes with killer abs]

I'm waiting for Tonko's, Niro's, Septimus's standing ovation (lolpun)

I still <3 teh Niro, not much Septimus till he grows a beard, and Tonko to ass rape me (joking, im super cereal; nooooooooooo only exit hole no entry) ^-^

[Saga]

Not being homophobic or anything

It's from the F'n Villiage Voice for fucks sake

They will spin anything to adhere to there lifestyle (gays/queers)
[Not knocking them, but seriously to a gay man 300 is an orgy of scantily dressed men with red capes with killer abs]

I'm waiting for Tonko's, Niro's, Septimus's standing ovation (lolpun)

I still <3 teh Niro, not much Septimus till he grows a beard, and Tonko to ass rape me (joking, im super cereal; nooooooooooo only exit hole no entry) ^-^

Septimus is gay?

[Charla]

Drama senses... tingling.

[Melchiah]

I just got home from seeing this film. I felt as though my money was well spent. You will always have some asshole who doesn't like a movie because it isn't The Notebook, and will just create a trash write-up like the one above that grasps at minor details. FFS, he bashes the fact that the director wanted to be faithful to Miller's original... thats where the dark and grimy scenery comes from. As for half-ass political intrigues, well the main point of the story was to fantasize the Battle of Thermopylae, which I found to be executed properly. The "half-ass political intrigues" were only there to explain why there were only 300 Spartan soldiers at the pass. They didn't require much scenery, ergo they didn't get it. Duh. As for the over-the-top gay jokes, yes I agree with BRP in that this is a bit of a stretch. If you look hard enough you can find phallic symbols anywhere. It's a measure of your class as to whether or not you interpret them as such. If you don't like comic books or graphic novels, why would you go see a movie adaptation of one?

[arlania]

I dont really think the "Gay jokes" were political or w/e in nature. I mean it's common knowledge that yes the Athenians and pretty much all of Greece had sex with men, women, children, goats, rocks, or anything else. I mean hell look at some of the stories of Zeus wandering around banging anything that moved. Anyone that derives politcal commentary from a movie like this is the type of person that shouldnt be watching a movie like this haha.

[Plow]

cliffs please

tl;dr

This is getting over done. Has BG become illiterate? You'd think "Funny 300 Review (no spoilers)" would be enough to get the idea across that reading the thing is the whole point. That's like skimming by a stand-up comic and asking "What happens at the end?".


As the for the review itself, the whole "gay" joke is a bit over-the-top.

I think what he really meant was "holy shit that's long, anybody that actually read it think it was worth reading?"

[Devek]

If you went to school it would take you less than 5 seconds to be able get the basic gist of what the review said.

It is written in well form which makes it even easier to gloss over.

It took me more time to write this reply..

That being said, I think Laguna was just trying to be funny.

[Metah]

Not being homophobic or anything

It's from the F'n Villiage Voice for fucks sake

They will spin anything to adhere to there lifestyle (gays/queers)
[Not knocking them, but seriously to a gay man 300 is an orgy of scantily dressed men with red capes with killer abs]

I'm waiting for Tonko's, Niro's, Septimus's standing ovation (lolpun)

I still <3 teh Niro, not much Septimus till he grows a beard, and Tonko to ass rape me (joking, im super cereal; nooooooooooo only exit hole no entry) ^-^

Septimus is gay?

I loled so hard

[Sonomaa]

I think some critics review movies badly to get attention to their other shitty reviews

[Maguspk]

And can someone finally tell me what tl;dr stands for?

Too long; didn't read

L2semicolon.

[Manako]

I enjoyed the movie very much, definitely money well spent, and worth seeing in theaters. I got to see it on a DLP projector, it was pretty awesome. I also thought the review was funny though, I think the film was very well made but the majority of the points of the review were funny.

[Flokk_9]

Heh.

I was weary of the flexing and manful screaming by the end of the first fight scene, sat through it anyway just for the artistic execution. Overall I thought the graphic novel was far superior. And Sin City definitely raped 300's face.

[Septimus]

I saw it on Saturday. You know it is very sad when a movie's inadequacies cannot be covered up by 300 really hot men in subligaria. The dialog was terrible, the violence was blah, the political subplot was stupid, and I think that whole "slow down,speed up" bullet time thing needs to burn in hell.

And anyone who thinks there wasn't a racist and homophobic undertone to the movie needs to open their eyes and pay attention.