More 300 Rorschach tests.

A mini roundup of 300 reviews over at Instapundit by guest blogger, Tom Maguire.

Armed Liberal acknowledges the historical source and sees no modern references, while noting the Rorschach test nature of the criticism. He also notes the historical ignorance of many reviews…

Kenneth Turan of the LA Times was the only one who 'got' the historical context of Thermopylae (even though he didn't like the movie). Sheesh. You'd think that people who write about culture for a living would know something about it, wouldn't you?

Dana Stevens at Slate criticizes the movie for not being anti-war.

But to cast 300 as a purely apolitical romp of an action film smacks of either disingenuousness or complete obliviousness. One of the few war movies I've seen in the past two decades that doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment, 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity.

Wretchard, at the Belmont Club, mocks the Slate.com review of 300.

I have no idea whether 300 is a good movie, but Steven's review is an entertaining example of how all events, including those which happened nearly 500 years BC, must be judged according to prisms of contemporary political correctness. Miller had to remember, for example, “that we're in the middle of an actual war”. Did he not realize his duty to denounce it? But what if Miller had made a movie about the fight against Hitler? Would it have been necessary to remind the audience that Hitler was a nonsmoking, animal-loving, vegetarian artist?

But it isn't all such detailed meta analysis. Sometimes it's just a fart joke.