If ever there was a sign that today’s youth is in danger of cultural brain rot, the trend in “comedy” that has included Date Movie, Epic Movie, and now Meet the Spartans is it. Fortunately, critics everywhere are jumping at the opportunity to get creative in trashing this film, and that’s got to do at least something to squash its chances. At the moment, there are 15 reviews posted at Rotten Tomatoes, giving MtS a cumulative score of 0%. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that every single critic gave no right to exist.

One of my favorites is Brian Orndorf of DVDtalk.com calling it a “new low, even for these diseased buffoons,” and concluding that MtS getting made is the work of Satan. Evidently the movie goes out of its way to shower characters in vomit and other bodily fluids, and we see the first such “joke” in the first five seconds.

The problem with a movie like this getting made is that it drags the playing field down with it. The best parody of late was Scary Movie. (I haven’t seen Walk Hard yet.) Say what you will about the work of the Wayans brothers. Point out that SM has the quirk that it’s a parody largely of Scream, which is itself a parody. But SM is head-and-shoulders above these tripe films like MtS whose scripts do nothing but toss out jokeless pop culture references. Scary Movie had plenty of low-brow humor, but it also included some witty stuff, and it had this thing called a plot that a lot of your good movies like to include. I hear far too many people writing off the art form of comedy, and MtS and their ilk are part of why. I’m even offended to watch the commercials.

But I’m here to tell you that the trend might be on its way out. While tutoring this week, one of my kids asked if I had seen the trailer for MtS.

“Looks pretty stupid, doesn’t it?” he said.

Hopefully my maturing student is instead a sign that as a collective audience we’re moving past any interest we once had in the horse-semen drinking, face-in-a-fat-guy’s-butt movies of the early 21st century. Hopefully his disinterest in the film translates to more than the fact that he recently turned 14, just past the threshold for enjoying such puerility. Hopefully there aren’t millions of 12- and 13-year-olds just below him still willing to fork over the cash to make MtS a hit. Because if there are, God knows the diseased buffoons will make another.

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