Movie Review: Five Reasons to See 300

And Seventeen Reasons to Not See It

"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.