juvenile

Rating: 5/10 (2 May 2007)

The first thing I thought after watching this film was "man I sure would have liked the 300 a lot more if I was 18 years old".
A thought that pretty much sums up the core of the problems with the 300. The film was clearly written for a much younger audience.
The 300 while at times visually pleasing consistently lacked a certain depth in character development and dramatic air. Even the action sequences while being fast paced were glorified to the point of being cliché. Thus making an aspect of the film that had the greatest potential, fall short of mind blowing. 300 failed to deliver the emotional punch the trailer so boldly promised.
Also this film suffered from "Gladiator" envy. If you pay attention you'll see how desperately the 300 tries to imitate that movie. Especially in regards to the soundtrack. It's like they just sampled bits from the Gladiator score. While in some cases paying homage to a film in this way can yield satisfying results, in the 300 it only serves to embarrass the more observant spectator.
The mainly CGI environments, while a fairly juicy source of eye candy also lacked in their own way, emotion and depth. While beautiful to look at, the scenery was so obviously CGI it was hard not to notice and became a nuisance after a short while.This was even more apparent if you paid attention to the lighting on the actors. On more than one occasion it was very hard not to notice they were being lit by studio lights rather than the sunrise. Also, at certain times when the actors voices were booming you could hear the echo of a sound-stage rather than the echo off a cliff face. I'm sure also that having little to work with in the way of grand scenery and visceral stimuli hurt the actor's performances somewhat. How much emotion can one stir up staring at a fake rock and green screens every day of shooting?
This is not to say the 300 was entirely unsatisfying. It delivers enough thrills to merit at least seeing once. There are several somewhat memorable moments, including a grim but beautiful overhead shot of fallen Spartans that looks like an exquisite mosaic.
You won't walk away from 300 wiser but some of you, especially younger audiences will walk away from a noble yet somewhat sophomoric attempt at epic film making.