When my 16 year old Saudi exchange student, "Z", and I first saw the previews for "Meet the Spartans", I told him that this could literally be the worst movie he could possibly see during his stay here in the States. He looked at me, said, "I know", and then said, "We've got to see it!"

Thus, there we were last Friday, off to Castleton to see this anticipated disaster on its first day of release. Postponing for a moment my actual reaction to this, what is the word I'm looking for, oh yeah . . . movie, he looked at me as the closing credits came on and said, "That wasn't the worst movie we've ever seen." I looked at him and said, "Oh yeah, name one that could have possibly been more dreadful." He couldn't, and I didn't try.

As we passed the two young ticket takers exiting the theater, they looked at me and asked, "So what did you think?" After telling them that I literally feared that my IQ had dropped 20 points, I told them that anyone who left this disaster claiming to have enjoyed it should be entitled to free psychiatric care at the theater's expense.

To begin with, any movie that has Carmen Electra parading around as the Queen of Sparta is overwhelming likely to be devoid of any socially redeeming value on its face. Secondly, the film was a mishmash of bawdy rifts on last year's spectacular "300." It began with inane cliches and went downhill from there.

While most of the attempts at parody were as lame as they were devoid of humor, the pity is that this material could have been mined for some funny moments. For example, when Paris Hilton's look-a-like (if you exclude her hunch back) was asked to bow to Xerxes, the God/King of Persia, she responded, "A Hilton girl does not bow, but we will bend over!" That's funny.

Unfortunately, not much else was in this lame and sophomoric mess.