National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus

 (2011)

National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray delivers great video and poor audio, but overall it's a disappointing Blu-ray release
An Airplane!-style parody of recent sword-and-sandal films, centered on Troy's greatest general, Awesomest Maximus, who is intensely loyal to his father-in-law, King Looney, but isn't terribly bright. Goaded by his ambitious wife, the Princess Hottessa, Awesomest finds himself on a diplomatic mission to Greece that goes horribly awry, leading to a war in which he must face the seemingly undefeatable Greek warrior, Testiclees.

For more about National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus and the National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray release, see the National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray Review

Starring: Will Sasso, Kristanna Loken, Rip Torn, Ian Ziering, Sophie Monk
Director: Jeff Kanew

» See full cast & crew

National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray Review

Is This the Face that Launched a Thousand Dick Jokes?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben, February 27, 2012

Once upon a time, the name "National Lampoon" came attached to movies that were silly, obnoxious, over-the-top and made millions howl with laughter. Films like Animal House and the best entries in the Vacation series worked because they had memorable characters, told coherent stories with a beginning, middle and end, and took the time to match punchlines with setups, comics with straightmen, Clark Griswold with Ellen, Bluto with Otter, Flounder and Boon.

This isn't one of those films. Writer-producer Jason Burinescu is a new media guy who doesn't believe in such old-fashioned virtues. But what else can one expect from someone whose chief claim to fame is co-founding a site called AsktheHotChick.com, which promotes itself with rhetoric like the following (and I swear I'm not making this up):

. . . we searched around the country and met with thousands of girls to find the Smartest, Savviest, Most Caring and Coolest, but REAL Hot Chicks to be our IN-HOUSE HOT CHICK EXPERTS and give it to guys straight on an on-going basis.

In his (one can only hope) sole attempt at filmmaking, Burinescu latched onto the technique popularized by Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles and the "ZAZ" group (for "Zucker, Abraham, Zucker") in Airplane!, where you parody a film genre but stuff the script with joke after incongruous joke, on the theory that something will stick. These creations grow like weeds, as shown by the dreary sequels to Scary Movie, and only a few work. Brooks has made clunkers (see Robin Hood: Men in Tights), and so have members of ZAZ (try not to see Scary Movie 3 or 4). But all of them are masterpieces compared to Burinescu's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus (hereafter, TLAM), which attempts to send up contemporary sword-and-sandal pics, starting with Troy and including Alexander, 300 and, of course, Gladiator.

Now, neither Brooks nor ZAZ are known for subtlety, but they do have craftsmanship. Much of Airplane! works, because ZAZ made the effort to set up serious-looking situations stocked with actors known for straight roles (Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Barbara Billingsley), who then deadpanned the most ridiculous statements imaginable ("Don't call me Shirley." "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"). In Blazing Saddles, Brooks and his co-writers (including Richard Pryor) carefully arranged to have a racist frontier town find itself encumbered with a black sheriff; one joke after another could be built on that foundation.

Burinescu doesn't have the patience for this kind of planning. For him it's enough to mash up a few references to the films he's parodying with plenty of bare breasts, dick and blowjob jokes, a few flamingly gay characters for mockery, and a lesbian kiss as the pièce de résistance. Now that's entertainment. Incredibly, this script got made.



Awesomest Maximus (hereafter, "AM") (Will Sasso) is an idiot who's also Troy's greatest general. Just go with it. He's married to the Princess Hottessa (Kristanna Lokken, who was more believable as a terminator), daughter of King Looney (Rip Torn, giving new meaning to the word "slumming"). The King is discontent, because his only son and heir, Orlando (Gary Lundy), is both inept and probably gay. Currently on a diplomatic mission to Greece, Orlando needs supervision; so the King sends AM to the court of King Erotic (Khary Payton), the only character in the film who's a more overt queen than Orlando, despite being married to the gorgeous Princess Ellen (Sophie Monk). Orlando and Ellen bond over fashion, and she runs away with him to Troy, despite AM's counsel. King Looney welcomes them with open arms, because he takes Ellen's arrival with Orlando as proof his son isn't gay. Thus, "Ellen of Troy" (get it?) provokes a war between Troy and Greece.

King Erotic's chief warrior is the undefeatable Testiclees (Ian Ziering), whose mother dipped him in magic potion when he was born, making him invulnerable except at the portion of his anatomy that didn't touch the potion, because that's where she held him, namely . . . well, check out the name. Testiclees is a moody, egotistical warrior with Brad Pitt-style locks, who frequently won't come out of his tent, preferring to stay and spar with his beloved but mentally challenged Little Cousin (Edward Barbanell). His impossibly youthful mother, Milfia (yes, I groaned too), is played by Tiffany Claus, who looks and sounds like Angelina Jolie in Alexander, and their relationship is borderline incestuous and occasionally crosses the line.

Do you need more? AM consults the oracles for guidance, but they turn out to be proprietors of a strip club with giant boils on their faces. Their prophecies are fabrications, and they tell AM to fight the Greeks with 300 warriors. AM does this but gets shoved over a cliff in a replay of the iconic scene from 300. Presumed dead, he's washed up on the ocean's shore, only to be sold into slavery and sent into an arena to entertain King Erotic, where he prevails in gladiatorial combat before revealing his true identity. "Are you not entertained?" shrieks AM. ("No!" I said to the screen.) King Erotic proceeds to torture AM with the rack and fat women greased in Crisco (hey, I didn't write it), but AM escapes when Testiclees rushes in looking to avenge his Little Cousin, who was one of the vanquished gladiators. AM makes it back to Troy, but while he's enjoying his reunion with Hottessa, King Erotic successfully breaches the city's fortifications through the ingenious strategm of building a wooden . . . guess what? (Hint: It's neither a horse nor a rabbit.) AM persuades the King to settle the war by single combat, and Erotic summons Testiclees as his champion, but AM learns his secret vulnerability and prevails.

Tony Cox, the little person from Bad Santa, plays a turncoat Trojan named Minoritees, whom King Erotic keeps trying to seduce. The voicover narration is by rapper Ludacris, and it leads to a final joke about a guy sitting in a bar. That, too, isn't funny.

National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

TLAM was shot on the Red One digital camera by John Darbonne, whose credits are mostly short films and videos. All of the Red One system's virtues are on full display here, including clarity, detail and an absence of video noise. Still, given the quality of the movie itself, a distressed, "grindhouse" look might have been more appropriate. The effects work is fake and cheesy (whether intentionally or due to budgetary constraints is impossible to tell), and the sets look like they were made for standard definition TV. If the point of the hi-def photography's quality was to make a joke out of the production's low budget, it failed miserably. All it did was reveal an eyesore.

National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Now here's something you don't see anymore: a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack at a bitrate of 384 kbps. Pardon me while I time-travel back to 1997 and the birth of the DVD format, which pretty quickly upped the standard bitrate to 448 kbps. On Blu-ray the usual bitrate for DD is the maximum of 640 kbps, which, with all due respect to lossless purists, yields results that are generally indistinguishable from an uncompressed master.

What's going on? My guess is that Image knew what a stinker they had on their hands and cut the production budget for this title to the bare minimum, which included using the same data files for both the DVD and Blu-ray soundtracks. It isn't much of a loss. The sound editing is as cheesy as the visual effects. Surround information is limited to the occasional presence of water. The battlefield effects are non-existent, even when arrows fly, and there's never an attempt to create more of an environment than you'd get on a sketch comedy show. The dialogue is clear enough (unfortunately), and the score by Brian Glasgow (who's obviously trying to build his resume) goes in one ear and out the other.

National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 2:33): Every bit as dumb as the film.


• Bonus Trailer (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 2:20): Appropriately enough, the bonus trailer is for Division III: Football's Finest, which is almost, but not quite, as stupid a movie. The bonus trailer plays at startup, can be skipped with the chapter forward button and is not otherwise available once the disc loads.

National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

I am sure there are viewers who will enjoy this film. If you're one of them, you should be able to judge from the description and screenshots. If so, happy viewing. Otherwise, my work here is done.

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