Movie Review: Five Reasons to See 300

"300" is now playing in theaters, and you may have seen trailers featuring muscular manly men running fearlessly (in slow-motion, naturally) to battle. What else happens? Not much. Let me break it down for you.

Reasons to Not See It:

1. Directed by Zach Snyder, whose only other feature-length film credit is Dawn of the Dead (2004). This movie was not nominated for an Academy Award.

2. Audience expected to believe that Spartan men walked about all day long in (and battled in!) skintight black leather briefs. In winter.

3. Audience expected to believe that U.K.-born Lena Headey (as Queen Gorgo) is a Greek woman with no facial hair (other than perfectly groomed eyebrows. Two of them!).

4. Audience expected to believe that Queen Gorgo, a women who has birthed at least one offspring, has absolutely perfect breasts.

5. King Leonidas constantly yelling "SPARTAAAAAAAAAANS!" like they're a football team that made it to the All-State Playoffs.

6. The 300 constantly yelling "Hoo-ah!" or something that makes them sound like drunken fraternity boys. Or drunken Marines.

7. Spartans always filthy and oily. Some dirty = sexy. This kind of dirty = tetanus shot.

8. Spartans are always building walls out of dead people. They're very cheerful when they do it. Creepy much, Spartans?

9. More blood is tossed about this movie than has been seen by the American Red Cross Blood Drive in the last decade.

10. Xerxes is some bizarre piercing-obsessed, metallic body-painted, plucked eyebrow drag queen with a voice more manly than Edward Earl Jones'. He's like the Ra guy in "Stargate" mixed with a WWF wrestler, with a smattering of RuPaul. He's a huge version of "America's Next Top Model" stylist Jay Manuel, with body paint and excessive body jewelry.

11. Oh my god, how many heads can one see cut off before one grows completely jaded? If one of my kids cut the other one's head off right now, I'd yawn.

12. I've never seen these guys eat so much as a PowerBar, and they battle for hours without getting tired. They skip Gatorade and go straight to building corpse walls.

13. Way too much makeup is used on the Spartan men's abdomens- yes, we can see they have great six-packs. We don't need copious amounts of eye shadow to emphasize each individual muscle.

14. Seriously, the sound crew on this one must have been very challenged: "Alright, team, we need 672 different 'splat' and 'squish' noises for these battle scenes. Also, we'll need 326 'slicing-through-neck' sounds."

15. No matter how much you like head-to-head battle scenes, you'll eventually tire of these ones.

16. Seriously, the flying blood gets tedious.

17. They all die at the end. The fight, they fight, they fight, they die. That's the sum of the plot. Sorry if I ruined it for you.

Reasons to See It:

1. Lena Headey's perfect breasts. Really- they're fantastic. If a plastic surgeon could guarantee me a set like that, I'd sell my children to pay for the surgery.

2. Pretty good king/queen love scene early on. And when I say "love scene," I think you know what I mean. Mercifully, no one yells "SPARTAAAAAANNNS!" during an orgasm.

3. Spartans look pretty good in black leather briefs, even if, in the back of your mind, you imagine that they must experience chafing quite a bit.

4. Spartan men are all ridiculously buff- even the old dudes.

5. Your fifteen year old son will be teary-eyed at the end, and you can laugh and make fun of him.

My recommendation? Wait for "300" on DVD.