Actually, this is the very idea that the ancient Greeks had. It's pretty well known that Sparta deliberately cultivated homosexual relationships between soldiers. It's somewhat less well known that Thebes did something similar. They formed an elite team made up exclusively of gay couples that led them to a 40 year string of military victories, defeating armies several times their size. This Sacred Band, as it was called, was only defeated by the superior tactics and weaponry of the Macedonians, who rolled over the Greek states like a tidal wave.

So it's not just comedy. It actually works in at least some situations.

Yes Wumpus, it is, technically difficult to say that the film is specifically anti-Muslim as you have pointed out it takes place before Islam was even a twinkle in Mohammed's eye...

But you have to keep in mind that this "clash of cultures", this East vs West grudge match, has been a long standing issue, one that keeps playing out over the last three millennia with different peoples, religions, and political entities replaying the same mistakes of our ancestors over and over and over again. That the film is technically about "Persians" (who were by definition the elite people of the Persian Empire, which was an amalgamation of Eastern peoples (as you well know)), is just a detail when looked at as an overall history of conflict... just because the film is not literally Spartans vs. Muslims, or Iranians, it's pretty explicit that these cinema Persians, are the ancestors of the axis-of-evil headliners.

Given that fact that we are currently in the grips of another cycle of this age-old conflict, it is understandable that the Iranians feel they are the target of a hollywood style smear campaign. Having seen the film, I can only say that they have every reason to be pissed, the more I think about it the more I realize that the overall tone of this film aimed to reiterate this this cultural conflict by appropriating history.

That is one of the reasons that chuckle-head at :31 pisses me off so much. People need to start realizing just how much of an impact the respresentation of history has on current political/cultural affairs.

If you need more evidence of this fact and similar controversies, I suggest you look into the current problems between Greece and Macedonia over who has the 'right' to actually be called 'Macedonians', or the various problems in identifying cannibalism at archaeological sites, especially those in the American Southwest. The portrayal of ancient peoples and cultures does have a direct bearing on current attitudes, and one cannot simply write this film off as a good bit of bloody fun.