This is Sparta?

Karah, Kevin and I finally made it to "300" on Saturday night, and as you might recall, I was pretty excited to see the movie. Unfortunately, my attendance came only because of a dog who ate too much food. I was slated to go downtown with a group of college friends, namely one couple, but said couple's pooch began repeatedly throwing up in the mid-evening. I received a short phone call that went something like this:

"Hi Ted. We're taking Howie to the hospital. Blood is coming out of his ears, his stomach feels pointy, and...oh, he's throwing up again. Talk to you later."

Okey dokey. Testing thankfully discovered that Howie found a stash of dog food at a friend's house and ate and ate and ate and ate. X-rays showed that his stomach was about five times its normal size.

But I digress. Since those plans were dashed by Howie's indulgence, I was able to join K&K for the flick. I was thinking something along the lines of: "Wonderful, legendary tale, cool visual effects, excellent reviews, box office hit...what could go wrong?"

Well, I looked at a bunch of reviews on RottenTomatoes and found that this line from Fred Topel at CanMag that fit my feelings well:

"300 is clearly ambitious and succeeds on the visual and visceral levels that are its priority. But it has a lot of space to fill in between and that's where it kind of falls apart."

I also agreed with Topel's feelings about the ending, although I would have added one point. Herodotus' version of Leonidas' death is much better than (presumably) Frank Miller's take. You can read my previous post for Herodotus' tale, and I won't ruin anything by saying what happens at the end of this movie.

Overall, I think I expected more because what is written in history is so much more gripping than what happens in this movie. Films based on books (fiction or non-fiction) almost always fail to live up to what you've read, and this was the case for me. I neglected to take into consideration that this particular film was based off a graphic novel that was based loosely off of history.