300: In Praise of Film Reviewers

Rather than writing about the film specifically (because if you've seen the trailers/ads for it you already know if it is something you want to see or not, and my personal opinion probably wouldn't sway you one way or the other; and I will say this, the movie is exactly what it is being sold as x10, for better and worse) I will take a slightly different angle.

Most people I know tend to think that film critics/reviewers don't know what they're talking about or are out of touch. (Of course, most statistics show this to be untrue, movies that make lots of money are typically well-reviewed, according to Boxofficemojo.com, of the top 20 grossing films of 2006, 12 were well-receieved critically, from 2002-2005, all of the top 10 received wide critical praise...check the link above to see the highest grossing movies in every year back to 1980...Three Men & A Baby was the top money-earner of 1987...further proof that the 80's is a decade largely worth forgetting).

But regardless of what you think of a critic's opinion on a movie, every once in a while a movie comes along that inspires a critic, either directly or in spite of itself, to create some of the more entertaining prose being written today. And then there are times when we are really lucky and a movie is released that unleashes the creativity of the mass of critics and we are treated to a plethora of glorious review blurbs (the last such film I can recall was Catwoman) and 300 is just such a movie. Here are some of the choice nuggets in print about this movie:

From a review by A.O. Scott at the New York Times:
"Devotees of the pectoral, deltoid and other fine muscle groups will find much to savor as King Leonidas leads 300 prime Spartan porterhouses into battle against Persian forces commanded by Xerxes, a decadent self-proclaimed deity who wants, as all good movie villains do, to rule the world. The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers...but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities."

From Glenn Whipp at LA Daily News:
"Yes, "300" is the most homoerotic action movie ever made (not that there's anything wrong with that), and that is some kind of landmark, though not the one the movie's marketing — which is trying to vacuum up the allowance money of mostly heterosexual adolescent boys — is trying to suggest. Things we learn about Spartan men from Zack Snyder's "300": Spartan men are hard. Spartan men are strong. Only Spartan women give birth to real men, thus only Spartan men are real. Their sweat is real. It makes them oily. Spartan men don't wear much in the way of clothes, favoring tight-fitting Speedos for most of their daily activities, activities that include sweating, the thrusting of, um, spears and the killing millions of foreigners who want to take away their freedom, i.e. their right to sweat and thrust...Women exist either to writhe around naked (frat boys confused by the way Snyder's camera ogles the men can take solace in Xerxes' frenzied lesbians) or act tough like a Spartan man, minus the sweat."

From Dana Andrews' review at Slate.com:
"In at least one way, the film is true to the ethos of ancient Greece: It conflates moral excellence and physical beauty (which, in this movie, means being young, white, male, and fresh from the gyms of Brentwood).
Here are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with the "bad" (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both). The Persian commander, the god-king Xerxes is a towering, bald club fag with facial piercings, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him."

From Brian Jurgens at Freezedriedmovies.com:
"The character design is less impressive. For one, all the bare-chested men make this seem less like a retelling of Greek history and more like an adaptation of Men’s Fitness magazine. I’ve invented a term to describe the film’s stylized action, which recalls the great Hong Kong “pistol opera” wave in the 90’s, only without any pistols, or shirts: “nipple opera”.
Lest you be concerned that all the muscled himbos on screen make 300 a movie that only gay men could love, the filmmakers have gone out of their way to ensure that gay men will be offended by the film by presenting the villain Xerxes as some kind of supersissy who wears makeup, has long fingernails, and makes lisping advances to King Leonidas. It’s really the most offensive kind of revisionism – in reality, Xerxes was a ferocious monster of the most aggressive sort. But Miller thought that his villain would be all the more hateful if he were presented as a stereotypical predatory homosexual, so he took the liberty of changing history for his own purposes."

From Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com:
"The actors march around in package-enhancing skimpy outfits, and their skin glows. But the film has a poreless, waxen quality, as if all sensuality had been airbrushed out of it: The actors struggle valiantly to take hold of their characters, but deep down they know they've donated their bodies, and their faces, to science....Spartan he-men spout declarative sentences like "Only Spartan women give birth to real men!" and sneer at their fellow city-staters, the Athenians, calling them -- with straight faces -- "boy lovers." Then they don battle garb consisting of leather Speedos and flowing deep-red capes; when the fighting starts, they add helmets and strap-on shinguards, but their pectorals, and the rippling contours of their washboard stomachs, remain exposed, Village People style. In one scene, Leonidas watches as a young soldier demonstrates his spear-chucking prowess: "Fine thrust!" he says, nodding approvingly. It's an obvious nugget of comic-book homoeroticism, but Snyder doesn't let himself, or his actors, have fun with it: The movie stays well inside its closet of self-seriousness."

From Eric Nellin at Scene-stealers.com:
"Battle scenes recall the replay option on a football video game where you can watch slo-mo, sudden zoom-ins, and rotating camera angles. This allows you to see the moment of contact or, in the case of “300,” see every detail as a spear enters an ogre’s eye. There is so much slow motion that if they had run the entire film at normal speed, it would have been half as long."

From Kyle Smith's review at the New York Post:
"So our "hero" is a psycho, which puts a hollow at the center of the story. But can't we just ignore the politics and enjoy the decapitations?...when we meet Xerxes: He's modeling the latest in earrings, dog collars, lipstick and eyeliner, like an 8-foot RuPaul...Keeping in mind Slate's Mickey Kaus' Hitler Rule -- never compare anything to Hitler -- it isn't a stretch to imagine Adolf's boys at a 300 screening, heil-fiving each other throughout and then lining up to see it again."

From John Beifuss at Commercialappeal.com:
"Coming soon to a football camp, police academy, military base, neocon assembly and jihadist cell near you: "300," a gory yet motivational celebration of the "no retreat, no surrender" code of the ancient Spartans that disdains cut-and-run senators, coalition-of-the-not-willing-enough Arcadians, "diseased old mystics," the physically inferior (never trust a hunchback) and anyone who doesn't understand (to quote Queen Gorgo) that "freedom isn't free." War is hell? Not for these heroic Spartans"

From 'Bryant' at deep-focus.com:
"...with its fetishistic depiction of the nearly naked male body as nothing more or less than a merciless instrument of warfare, it fills a much-needed gap between gay porn and recruitment film. Don’t get me wrong. Gerard Butler makes a fine piece of beefcake and gives a solid performance, shouted and snarled, as King Leonidas, who led 300 hale and hardy Spartans on a daredevil mission against the feared armies of Persia just to prove a point. And I appreciate the aesthetic value of nudity and near-nudity in film. The acres of flesh on display here lend some human appeal to a movie that’s dominated by inhumanity...Other than the Spartan warriors, looking bronzed, muscular and oddly vulnerable in their red capes and Speedo-like battle-garb, the bulk of the movie is populated by misshapen freaks and nancy boys who stand between the 300 and their glory."

From Brian Orndorf at Ohmynews.com:
"The Spartan battles make up most of the running time, but truthfully, if you've seen one slo-mo, flying-through-the-air spearing, you've seen them all...All the shimmering golds, disfigured monsters, and half-naked men with their ripped abs (sure to be the most paused DVD in the history of West Hollywood) won't change the fact that "300" is a one-trick pony, and thanks to Tyler Bates's Whitesnake-meets-Hans Zimmer score, it's a ceaselessly earsplitting one too...Snyder makes a sloppy pass at emotional interaction between the king and queen, but he undercuts any progress with a writhing sex scene straight out of Shannon Tweed's once ubiquitous repertoire..."300" shoves the realm of digital manipulation and chest-thumping brawn past the point of no return...It's a fireworks show in the daytime, Christmas presents on Dec. 26, and porn without the penetration. I'm not big on movies needing a point to be appreciated, but this is the first film in a long time where I asked a movie, just what the hell are we accomplishing here? "