300 - a totally irreverent recap

So Tiff dragged Toni to watch 300 yesterday at a midnight screening because Toni didn't feel up for clubbing. Now this has to be noted as a blood moon event, literally and figuratively, as it is a rare occasion indeed where Toni (aka The Kissing Bandit) didn't want to shake her booty or moon strangers.

A little background about 300: Adapted from a video game, which explains the gorgeous if very improbable sets, the movie is set in ancient Greece where the tiny kingdom of Sparta defended the realm of Greece against the invading Persians with a mere 300 men. Every man in that battle died, but not without kicking some serious Persian ass in the process. This eggs the rest of Greece on in a sort of "anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better" game; not willing to be outdone by 300 bodybuilders, thereby ensuring even more Persian ass-kicking in the process and which explains why their only recognisable legacy today consists of a rapidly-declining carpet industry (this is hard for Toni to accept, but she has soberly accepted it as a sign of modernisation).

So after drinkies@Archi we set about securing tickets for the show, which Toni promised Tiff she'd love and love, she did. Here's why:

1. Scores and scores of stills with an army of six-packers with faces attached (being unabashedly heterosexual this caused quite a flurry of activity as Tiff found it increasingly hard to keep still as the movie went on).

2. Pile on the gratituous violence, we say. We loved its highly improbable fight scenes and the fact that Gerald Butler (last seen as possibly the best-looking but suckiest-sounding Phantom of the Opera ever) as King Leonidas of the Spartans makes Mr Gladiator Man himself look like a mewling pussy.

3. Cheesy dialogue and even-cheesier love scenes veering on soft-core porn (hey, gotta applaud the movie for not forgetting its core audience) had us hooting with glee and derision.

Did the rest of the audience find it as hilariously entertaining as we did? Apparently not - Tiff was appalled to find that the girl seated next to her actually had the sniffles towards the end when the inevitable slaughter of the Spartan army occurred. Poignant, maybe. But call us sceptics - using enough arrows to blot out the SUN to kill a man, albeit a king, seems a little like overkill (pun fully intended).