Your Highness NO STARS
The fantasy movie is a genre that has long been regarded as one that is aimed primarily at younger viewers. From Harry Potter to The Chronicles of Narnia, The Spiderwick Chronicles to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and even The Lord of The Rings and Stardust, not to mention many more besides, the vast majority of fantasy films released in the past decade have either been made for younger viewers or at least made so that they are suitable for them, none of them having carried a UK rating higher than a 12A. So, fantasy movies truly intended for viewing only by an adult moviegoing audience are something of a rarity in today’s moviemaking climate – although grown up fantasy does appear to be finding a home on television with HBO’s Game of Thrones and Starz’s Camelot being prime examples.
This is what really sets Your Highness apart from the crowd, the fact that it is a fantasy movie aimed purely at a more grown up audience, its content in no way being watered down to make it suitable for younger viewers. A sort of spoof – I say sort of so as not to associate it with the likes of the atrocious Meet the Spartans and many other recent spoofs of a similar nature (although quality wise such comparisons actually aren’t unfair) – of fantasy movies, Your Highness is a film that doesn’t parody the fantasy movies of recent times, allowing the likes of Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia to remain unscathed, instead lampooning 80s fantasy movies like the original Clash of the Titans, Conan The Barbarian and Labyrinth – the films that it’s actually spoofing highlighting that this is a film aimed at an audience of a more mature age – even though its crude 15 rated gross out humour style is more reminiscent of less well known and best forgotten 80s sword and sorcery movies like Deathstalker, The Barbarians and Barbarian Queen.
Taking the typical fantasy mould and turning it into something considerably sleazier and more adult, director David Gordon Green was apparently trying to achieve a similar goal to that he did with his Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy Pineapple Express in fusing outrageous crude comedy with an unexpected genre but the consensus to date is that he has failed in this goal, many reviews being overwhelmingly negative and the box office takings in America lacklustre. Of course, the concept of a fantasy movie being crossed with crude comedy in itself is not one that necessarily sounds like a recipe for success and the film’s leading man has not yet proven himself to be a box office draw. Danny McBride is one of those faces that you will likely recognise from his many, sometimes stand out, supporting performances in other comedy films, among them The Heartbreak Kid, Drillbit Taylor, Fanboys, the aforementioned Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Observe and Report, Land of the Lost and Due Date, and he has often received some level of praise in reviews of these films.
As evidenced by the underwhelming performance of Your Highness thus far, though, such praise doesn’t necessarily mean anyone wants to see him starring in a film all of his own. Something that makes the failure of the film somewhat more surprising, however, is that it also stars recent Academy Award winner Natalie Portman, whose mere nomination was enough to give a huge boost to the box office of adult romantic comedy No Strings Attached (even though the proximity of its release date to the actual nomination probably helped in that regard) and Academy Award nominee James Franco – one TV advert actually highlighting the awards credentials of both performers before going on to add “award winning party crasher Danny McBride” – two actors who you might expect would raise interest in the film a bar or two. Box office performance aside, however, does Your Highness live up to the poor reception it has had so far or does it in fact surprise, making itself deserving of a somewhat more majestic response? Throughout history, tales of chivalry have burnished the legends of brave, handsome knights who rescue fair damsels, slay dragons and conquer evil. But behind many a hero is a good-for-nothing younger brother trying just to stay out of the way of those dragons, evil and trouble in general.
Prince Thadeous (Danny McBride) is such a person. The lazy and self absorbed brother of the brave and heroic Prince Fabeous (James Franco), he would rather spend his days getting laid or stoned out of his mind than courageously embarking on deadly missions for the good of others. When he fails in his duties as best man on his brother’s wedding to the innocent and beautiful Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel), a wedding that goes horribly wrong when evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux) kidnaps her for his own nefarious purposes, his father King Tallious (Charles Dance) decides that enough is enough. As Fabeous is about to embark on a quest to request his bride, Tallious orders Thadeous to accompany him on his mission or face banishment from the kingdom. Thadeous reluctantly agrees and, accompanied by his trusty squire Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker), joins Fabeous and his group of loyal warriors Boremont (Damian Lewis), Manious the Bold (Simon Farnaby) and Thundarian (Deobia Operai) and Fabeous’ animal companion, mechanical bird Simon. But betrayal by supposedly loyal aide Julie (Toby Jones) is just around the corner and Fabeous, Thadeous and Courtney soon find themselves going it alone, until they encounter the brave and vengeful Isabel (Natalie Portman) that is. Isabel is after Leezar for their own purposes and, despite being repulsed by Thadeous’ attempts to woo her, she joins them on their quest.
But time is of the essence as Leezar plans to rape Belladonna in order to create a powerful dragon that only he can control and, if prophecy is to be believed, it is to happen very soon. Cue encounters with tribes of naked women, three headed snakes, horny minotaurs and all powerful wizards as all of them are tested and Thadeous must discover the hero within if they are to emerge victorious. “Prepare thyself for one twisted tale” says the voiceover at the start of Your Highness and little did I know going into this film just how twisted this film would turn out to be, twisted in all the wrong ways unfortunately. Right from the start with opening credits showing illustrations of Thadeous’ encounters with everyone he has managed to royally piss off covered in crude and puerile graffiti, this is a film where bad taste is the order of the day. The violence is bloody disgusting from the start to the finish and the level of gore, even as it is being played for laughs, may just make squeamish viewers feel like projectile vomiting and, if you are squeamish, the humour isn’t likely to inspire a feeling much different to that of the violence.
Offering up the same level of humour that dominated the awful 2009 film Lesbian Vampire Killers, the humour here is very crude and extremely puerile with a lot of drug references, even more sexually explicit content, a hell of a lot of explicit penis references and a s**t load of profanities making it seem like vulgarity is the default setting for everything. Instead of making smart observations about the fantasy genre – the film clearly draws inspiration from a number of other fantasy movies, the clockwork bird for instance being right out of ‘Clash of the Titans’, but fails to show much respect for any of them – the film just goes the route of an extremely below par fantasy with a lot of crude and disgusting gross out humour thrown in and then gross out humour that lacks even the slightest hint of wit or invention. If things like James Franco tossing off a perverted animatronic puppet, a man without a dick, a horny minotaur with a giant boner or a tribe of naked women are likely to make you laugh, I dare say you will have a whale of a time watching this film but, if like me, you have good taste, it’s far more likely you will be appalled by much of what goes on here.
Managing to prove offensive to several different groups of people, this is a film that often feels like something an adolescent teen male dreamed up and, given the exorbitant amount of explicit references to male genitalia, one with definite homosexual tendencies at that. There is little here to suggest any real degree of filmmaking talent on the part of director David Gordon Green nor Danny McBride, who wrote the script along with co-writer Ben Best, and it appears that Danny McBride seems to think that saying the F word a lot makes him funny. It doesn’t. As both writer and leading man he is a failure here. He may convince as a fat loser type character but nothing about his performance is even remotely funny and everything about it is completely vulgar. If it seems like the actors weren’t working to a script at all, it’s because a lot of the time they weren’t, the actors improvising most of their dialogue and the script itself being used on set. Improvised or not, though, the dialogue is not very good and the poor dialogue adds little to performances that are underwhelming all round. James Franco does the brave and heroic thing well but something never seems quite there about his performance and, as the villain of the piece, Justin Theroux is just weird. Zooey Deschanel gets to show off her fantastic singing voice, in a scene where James Franco sings very badly, but, despite delivering a performance full of virginal innocence, she is underused in a role that lacks the quirky edge that she injects into many of her performances.
Natalie Portman is the best thing in the film, delivering a performance that is strong, tough and sexy and nailing her character’s vengeful look, but even she is often treated as little more than a piece of eye candy, no more evident than in a film where she strips down to a metal thong bikini while McBride and Franco watch on, and she has the least screen time out of all the main cast members. Most of the actors seen here are genuinely talented but this film really is a complete waste of their talents and it is hard to see why the likes of Damian Lewis, Toby Jones and Charles Dance would even associate themselves with such drivel. To top it all off, the film even fails to really work as a fantasy. There is nothing here that hasn’t been done before and better by other fantasy films and, as the climax sees the film go into CGI overload, the visual effects prove to be far from special.
Even the action sequences aren’t up to much, even with Natalie Portman doing a very good job of beating up Danny McBride, perhaps the one thing that prevented this film from being completely unbearable. Other than that, the only positive thing that can be said that is that there are a few instances of beautiful scenery but this is a complete non factor in a film that is just ghastly. So, Your Highness is a film that, as a fantasy, is boring and lacking in excitement while, as a comedy, it is unfunny and gross. Best avoided then and a film not deserving of any kind of royal treatment.
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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)
© BRWC 2010.
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Rachel [ f.g.i. ] 18th April 2011
I was really looking forward to YOUR HIGHNESS, especially after becoming a recent fan of McBride in EASTBOUND AND DOWN. But it was horrible! Even if it was meant to be a spoof, the whole thing just seemed lazy. Most of the good jokes were shown in the trailer, the rest of them were forgettable indeed.
Anonymous 18th April 2011
I dunno, it looks awful.