MOVIE REVIEW
"Your Highness"
- West Acres 14
- Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity, violence and some drug use
- 102 minutes
- 0.5 out of 4 stars
Early in the medieval stoner adventure "Your Highness," there's a scene in which a haughty prince dons an ostentatious suit of armor. Then he tumbles clattering down a flight of stairs. That labored pratfall is the template for this movie. It is a pox on comedy.
The film reunites James Franco, writer-actor Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green, whose hit "Pineapple Express" was a druggy farce, a crime thriller and a buddy comedy rolled into one. This time the team tries to combine action, in-your-face vulgarity and juvenile anachronisms. These are three of my favorite things, but they come together here with dispiriting results.
Green and his actors have said the film was shot without a script, with the cast improvising from a rough outline. I can certainly believe it. Approximately half the dialogue consists of the f-word, and I don't mean "forsooth."
The plot is as old as story-telling itself as noblemen Fabious and Thadeous (Franco, in Prince Charming mode, and blustering coward McBride) face a series of tests on the way to rescue Fab's fiance Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) from the clutches of a wizard (arch Justin Theroux). Crucial to their quest is the lost Blade of Unicorn, an Excalibur-like sword that will enable them to battle the villain. The brothers form an on-again, off-again fellowship with a beautiful young archer (Natalie Portman) who plays every farcical scene perfectly straight.
ADVERTISEMENT
The film parodies early '80s sword-and-sorcery swashbucklers like "Beastmaster" and "Krull," ticking off the whole checklist of monsters, maidens, fortresses and magic weapons. This is an inopportune target for satire. There's a rule in comedy that states you can't make a joke about a joke. Trying to lampoon an inherently cheesy genre proves futile. The gags have nothing solid to stick to.
To be fair, there are some moments bobbing in an ocean of lost potential. Virginal Belladonna, held captive in a tower since childhood, has amusingly unrefined table manners. Franco grins his way through every conversation as if he's auditioning for a 14th-century toothpaste commercial. Portman delivers her bawdy dialogue with incongruously refined diction.
But for every half-smile, the film gives us a hundred uninspired profanities, crotch-kicks and penis jokes and a one-note performance by the petulant, bratty McBride.
"Your Highness" aims for irreverence but only achieves irrelevance.
