The development metformin weight loss children process leading up to Your Highness went something like this:
Two studio executives kick back in a corner office bouncing ideas off one another.
Exec. #1: “ Hey I metformin side effects and pcos just finished reading this awful script my assistant plopped on my desk. I bet we can sell the shit out of it!”
Exec. #2: “Fantastic!… So who do you think we can get?”
They email the script to Natalie Portman and Exec. #1 later follows up with a phone call.
Exec #1: “Natalie!… So you got the e-mail? Good. Now I understand you probably have some reservations about the, um… scene. I realize you probably don’t want to do this, but if I might add… Oh. So you do want to do this?… Well great! I’ll have the thong overnighted to your house for a test-fitting!”
**The preceding was a dramatization of events that may not have actually occurred.**
I thought Your Highness looked like a terrible movie, yet also one that would be tremendously fun to watch. I was absolutely correct on both accounts. I suppose studios will never run out of ways to adapt modern humor into a medieval setting. It’s such an easy idea to work with I don’t blame anyone who thinks they have the tools to make it tick. Your Highness definitely ticks and tocks alright, but in this case the clock hand that is doing the ticking just so happens to be a giant Minotaur penis that dangles from Danny McBride’s neck for half the movie.
That right there should tell you basically everything you need to know about this film. I hoped Your Highness had left something out of the trailers and that the whole thing would not be one sexual gross-out joke after another. I hoped there would be some redeeming values left for theater audiences to uncover. There had to be something they weren’t showing us, right? Just look at the cast! Surely Portman and Franco wouldn’t BOTH be in a simpleton, lowbrow comedy written by someone with an eighth grade sense of humor? But, alas, they are. The trailers showed us exactly what this film is made of. There are no redeeming surprises and the whole thing really is just one ridiculous, crass joke after another. And you know what? I actually kind of liked it!
Danny McBride is Thadeus, the lazy, overweight, and unskilled younger brother of James Franco’s Fabious. Prince Fabious is heir to his father’s throne and a living legend in his kingdom. A handsome, adventurous swordsman renowned for his epic quests, Fabious casts a gigantic shadow over Thadeus. There is jealousy here, but this is not the story of a brothers’ quarrel. McBride and Franco play excellently off each other as do their characters as a team. Thadeus is a bit of a couch potato who longs to go off on quests like his brother, but is also too lazy and scared to ever actually attempt one. He gets forced into it however, when Fabious’s bride-to-be, Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by the evil virgin-wizard, Leezar (Justin Theroux). Now the brothers, their male assistants, Courtney and Julie, and Fabious’s ROBOT BIRD, Simon, must set off on a quest to end all quests and rescue her. Along the way they meet up with Isabel (Natalie Portman), a beautiful warrior princess who just so happens is also off to face Leezar, but she can’t tell them that because you never, ever, tell a fellow traveler the nature of your quest.
So yeah, this movie sounds like a sack of shit doesn’t it? Normally I don’t enjoy movies that rely on one-dimensional sex jokes for every laugh, but I found myself laughing so often that I finally gave up caring and just went along with it. Throw your predispositions out the window because Your Highness is funny no matter how pretentious you are. None of the humor has anything to do with the story, but the plot is so flimsy and straightforward, that probably would not have been possible anyway. 99% of all scenes in the movie go in this order: Clichéd character development/action sequence – characters sit down and make indirect reference to genitalia/boobs/sexual intercourse/masturbating – character not present for the joke reflects on his/her past – plot exposition. There’s really not a whole lot to it. I did appreciate one clever bit of subtlety, however, when our heroes are taken prisoner by a tribe of Caucasian savages dubbed “White People.”
There is even a Yoda moment where Fabious and Thadeus visit a marijuana-growing troll/dinosaur/alien/catfish/mushroom that sexually abuses children so they can gain his insight into their quest and “clear their heads.” Need I say more?
I cannot bring myself to call Your Highness even an average movie. It is simply not very good. But this is one bad movie that I will confidently recommend because watching it is a blast.
Overall: 4/10
Directed by David Gordon Green. Written by Danny McBride and Ben Best. Production Design by Mark Tildesley. Cinematography by Tim Orr. Original Music by Steve Jablonsky. Edited by Craig Alpert.
Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, Toby Jones, and Rasmus Hardiker.
