National Lampoon’s next movie will be another awful parody movie, in the vein of the ones usually done by two out of the three writers of Scary Movie. It’s called National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus and they’re spoofing sword and sandal movies like 300. If that’s sounds familiar it’s because it’s already been done and it was called Meet the Spartans.
Normally this is the kind of news I would skip right over on HR, while stifling a snore, but this one is worth noticing because of who the Lampoon folks have roped into participating in it.
The cast list reads like a who’s who of talented and funny people who never made it big but might have, had they not ended up in the cellars of Mad TV or in Uwe Boll movies. But National Lampoon has scraped the very funny Will Sasso up off the scrapheap to lead a cast that includes super-hot former Terminator Kristanna Loken, diminutive Bad Santa sidekick Tony Cox, also super hot Sophie Monk, the once revered Rip Torn, and 90210 castoff Ian Ziering. Even the film’s director has shoulda been bigger potential. It’s being helmed by Jeff Kanew who once upon a time directed a little movie called Revenge of the Nerds before torpedoing his career by making V.I. Warshawski.
I’m not suggesting that by any stretch of the imagination there’s any reason for this movie to be good. This is National Lampoon after all, and they long ago sold out whatever standards they once had in favor of pumping out as many crummy direct-to-dvd movies as possible and cashing in on the National Lampoon name. Still, it’s interesting and if you watch it, well at least you’ll get to stare at Kristanna Loken. Can’t really go wrong there.
