Remember when spoofs used to be funny?

I remember, back in the day when I was growing up, movie spoofs were actually very funny. There was "Airplane!", "Top Secret!", than "Spaceballs", than the "Naked Gun" movies. Even the "Hot Shots" movies had their moments. These were movies that made you laugh because the jokes and visual gags actually made sense in the context of the movie.

But now, there is this small team of writer-directors who are just shitting over my memories of these fine, funny movies by bringing atrocities like "Scary Movie" and "Epic Movie" to our cinemas. And now there's the latest, "Meet the Spartans." Ugh. These movies are terrible. I haven't seen them, nor do I intend to. I know that makes me seem like a hypocrite, because I'm judging the movies without investing 90 minutes of my life into them, but man, the trailers are more than enough to persuade me to not waste my time.

The things I hate based on seeing the commercials is a lack of why I loved the older spoofs: because none of the jokes that I see actually make any sense. It's like they're just trying so hard to get a laugh out of anyone that they'll throw everything in. I was going to embed a video from Youtube, but I'm at my college and for some reason I'm not able to do it.

But I'm assuming you saw it, so let me give some examples. Britney Spears sitting in a chair, saving her head and babbling, in front of the big pit. The Leonidas impersonator kicks her into the pit, parodying the scene in "300." I don't get the humor in Britney Spears being kicked into a pit. Here's another example: Spiderman (black, as a parody of the 3rd one, I guess) is swinging from towers, and Donald Trump (not the real one) appears and says something stupid like "you're fired, Spidey" and tears away his web. Spidey falls and then swings another web that takes off Trump's combover. Again, what? Count in this stupid Deal or No Deal scene, and then they're having a dance competition, and Rambo saying "say hello to my little friend" and then we see a mini Rambo.

What's scary is that this was the number one movie at the box office. Didn't Oscar Wilde say "no one ever lost a dollar underestimating the intelligence of the American people?" Well, whoever said that was dead-on, judging that people are willing to pay for this shit. I'd rather have Rambo be the number 1 movie and I'm not a big Rambo fan (with the exception of First Blood, which is a great movie). Let me close by saying that I'm not a snob. I can appreciate low-brow humor as much as the next guy, and I never found the appeal in Monty Python or Faulty Towers, for example. But even I have standards.

I'm also sad that Kevin Sorbo's in it. I thought he was great in "Hercules" and "Andromeda." I just hope that he needed the money.