By Daniel Rutledge
The cast in this smoked out love-letter to ‘80s fantasy movies is unbelievably impressive and the filmmaking team includes some of the best names there are in modern comedy.
But the film is not as good as the sum of its parts.
Writers Ben Best and Danny McBride are two of the three dudes that made The Foot Fist Way and Eastbound & Down. Clearly at some stage in life they enjoyed smoking weed and watching Krull and Beastmaster, and, between tokes, joked about making their own version of one of those sword-and-sorcery classics.
Universal Pictures took the joke seriously, gave them and director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) US$50 million and the result is Your Highness.
Oscar darlings Natalie Portman and James Franco join McBride in a noble quest of damsels in distress, knights in shining armour, evil wizards - but most of all, schoolboy humour. Portman describes the desire to avenge her slain family as a "burning sensation in my beaver", McBride hangs a severed phallus around his neck, old witches talk about a sexual ritual called “the f **kening”... you get the idea.
The repetitive smuttiness is tied to an engaging enough story where the fantasy elements do work and all actors deliver fine performances, but somehow it’s just not that funny.
To those unfamiliar with stuff like Pineapple Express and Eastbound & Down, the incredibly foul-mouthed outrageousness of the script might draw more raised-eyebrow laughs than it did from me. But when you’re used to this brand of humour, while the vulgarity is still delightful, you're expecting it to build to much greater hilarity than it does here.
Your Highness is pretty funny, but the guys who made it can do way better. It’s a disappointment that is mildly amusing from start to finish, with a few decent laughs along the way.
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Your Highness
:: Director: David Gordon Green
:: Starring: Danny McBride, Natalie Portman, James Franco, Zooey Deschanel, Damian Lewis, Justin Theroux
:: Running Time: 102 mins
:: Rating: R16 - Contains violence, drug use, offensive language and sexual themes
:: Release Date: May 5, 2011
:: Trailer: Watch here
