Self-indulgent, shallow drivel. And I STILL didn't like it!

Rating: 2/10 (11 March 2007)

I'm writing this review from the perspective of someone who *likes* over-the-top, cheesy action movies that have more visual flare than dramatic integrity. This movie is terrible. The over-stylized, muddy visuals give the film a sort of hazy, dreamlike quality, which is the only thing appropriate about "300" because watching this movie feels a bit like peeking in on the dreams of a sexually repressed, seventeen-year-old sociopath with enough bottled homo-eroticism cursing through his desires to make even a homo like me want to wretch.
Every single aspect of this movie is over-emphasized and under-whelming. There's far too much talking, the dialogue is absurd, and nearly every line is shouted, even when it's totally inappropriate. "WOULDST THOU LIKE SOME SUPPER, SIR?" "NO, GOOD SIRE, I WOULDST BUT NOT SUP 'TILL I'VE ASSURED THE PROTECTITUTE OF ALL THE COMELY LASSES IN GREASE." The Spartans are made out to be such hardened warring-machines that it eliminates any possible feeling of suspense. It's like playing a video game after punching in a cheat code for invincibilitythere's no sense of dread, so it sucks out all the fun. The battle sequences in "300" are high on pomp, low on grandeur, using C-G effects to add blood splatter and a few beheadings when that effort would have been much better spent increasing the number of soldiers on screen at a time. The violence is less convincing than even much older, physical-effects-driven movies, and the frequent, blurted-out bits of exaggerated chivalry are far more cringe-inducing than any of the gore.
From me, "300" gets a D for plot, an F for dialogue, and an "Incomplete" for visuals. The actual event in history that this film was based on, the battle of Thermopylae, is ripe with opportunity for suspensethree hundred Spartans taking on an army of tens of thousands of Persians should be a scary, bloody thrill-ridebut this movie is so up it's own butt about how grand it is that it misses the point entirely. It's not thrilling, only halfway sexy, and more often than not just a bore.