No laughs among ‘Spartans’

I like edgy humor as much as the next guy. Jokes that flirt with off-color topics – whether they deal with race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, body shape, political affiliation, religion and any of the other topics that we obsess about as humans – can be really funny.

Whether we’re talking about “ Monty Python ’s The Life of Brian,” “There’s Something About Mary,” “Jackass” or “Airplane!” if the jokes are done cleverly enough, I love them.

And that’s why I was so disappointed with “Meet the Spartans,” the latest effort to do a spoof of all things Hollywood. Following in the footsteps of such films as the “Scary Movies” series, “Not Another Teen Movie” and “Epic Movie,” “Meet the Spartans” doesn’t have a plot so much as a script that dishes out one off-color joke after the next.

But the filmmakers forget one important thing: Being funny means more than settling for the most obvious poo-poo jokes.

That doesn’t stop them, though, in their attempts to make fun at the expense of the Spartan epic “300” – as easy a target of parody as has ever been made.

Yet here is the best the “Meet the Spartans” screenwriters could come up with:

They put one obscenely fat guy in the lineup of oiled hard-bodied male models.

They use “the fat guy from ‘Borat’ ” (Ken Davitian) to play the king of Persia.

They make Britney Spears out to be mentally deranged trailer trash.

They have the Spartan warriors skip to battle, hold hands and give each other open-mouth kisses as greetings (in contrast, they do high fives with their wives).

They use Rocky Balboa as one of the Persian secret weapons.

They crack wise at the expense of the “American Idol” judges (not to mention producer/presenter Ryan Seacrest ).

The result: Any five minutes of “Kenny vs. Spenny” is far funnier than the entire 84-minute running time of “Meet the Spartans.”

Below: Watch a melding of “Airplane!” and “Apocalypse Now” in this unique YouTube posting.