Yes, I got an Oscar Screener of MEET THE SPARTANS and it was worse than you think.
Until this weekend, I had never seen any of the Friedberg/Seltzer oeuvres. Clicking through channels, I happened upon EPIC MOVIE on HBO, saw Kevin McDonald as a pervy, aging Harry Potter and realized that it was my civic, pop culture duty to endure the rest.
"Worse than you think" sums it up pretty well. While it's not quite as hateful as SHOOT 'EM UP, it's so aggressively unfunny that it actually shifts into reverse (or neutral) and rolls backwards into self-parody. It's like watching a really, really bad internet video made by guys who don't realize that THEY are the joke. Not that anything in EPIC MOVIE actually made me laugh (although I came dangerously close to smiling on two or three occasions), but Friedberg and Seltzer give themselves away as talentless assholes in almost every scene.
I read somewhere (could have been The Defamer) that MEET THE SPARTANS appeals to fratboys and based on the evidence of EPIC MOVIE, I'd say that's right on the money. There's actually a party sequence with a couple of characters pounding booze while extras shout, "CHUG!! CHUG!! CHUG!!" This moment isn't brief and there's no discernible joke involved. It's just a moment where the movie seems to be daring the audience to, "CHUG!! CHUG!! CHUG!!"
The first "easter egg" of the end credits has all of the characters dancing to hip-hop music (the kind that affluent, alcoholic white boys tend to like) with a weird MTV's Spring Break vibe. I think that sums EPIC MOVIE pretty well. The movie makes no bones about the fact that it's less concerned with anything resembling actual comedy than it is with coming off as a big party.
So, while I haven't actually seen MEET THE SPARTANS, I feel like I have.
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2008:
CLOVERFIELD
THE ORPHANAGE
I also have a screener for a movie called THE FLOCK starring Richard Gere and Claire Danes, directed by Andrew (INFRERNAL AFFAIRS, STORM RIDERS) Lau. I made it about about 10 - 15 minutes in before turning it off.
Avoid.
