Review: Your Highness

Narrated by Charles Shaughnessy (of “The Nanny” and “Days of Our Lives”), this is the story of two princes. No, not the catchy Spin Doctors song, two actual princes and brothers, one brave (James Franco), one horny and oafish (Danny McBride). Franco has just rescued a damsel (Who’s that girl? It’s Zooey Deschanel!) from an evil sorcerer (Justin Theroux), but as he has plans to marry her, the sorcerer kidnaps her again, and has his own evil plans for her. The two brothers must band together (why? I dunno, stop asking so many questions!) and rescue her. Along the way they are joined by a g-string sporting warrior woman (Natalie Portman). Toby Jones plays an oddball saboteur, Damian Lewis is a turncoat, and Charles Dance is the King.

Some movies get referred to as ‘one-joke’ ideas. Directed by David Gordon Green (the eclectic director of films such as “Undertow”, “All the Real Girls”, and “Pineapple Express”) and co-scripted by star Danny McBride, this 2011 stoner comedy version of “The Princess Bride” has lots of ideas for jokes, but never gets around to actually giving us the joke. And unfortunately, the ideas are all pretty terrible too. At least in one-joke films, the joke more often than not is pretty funny. This is one of the worst comedies in years, and an embarrassment for all concerned. I thought Green’s previous “Pineapple Express” was a waste of the talented James Franco (now ‘Oscar nominee James Franco’) and Danny McBride, but at least that film was bearable.

It’s almost as if director Green, McBride, and co-writer Ben Best (McBride’s TV series “Eastbound and Down”) have watched “The Princess Bride” (a fun but overrated film if you ask me) and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (one of the all-time greats) whilst stoned, and this is the incompetent results of their barely-remembered, scramble-brained crash course into how to make a spoofy fantasy comedy. That is, they screw every single thing up in every conceivable way. For instance, it takes the “Holy Grail” approach to bloodletting, but without actually making it funny. Green and McBride probably thought they were being irreverent, but I say they’re being lazy and smutty for the sake of smuttiness. I doubt I’d even have liked this when I was 14, when dick jokes and swear words were always funny to me, because I’m 32 and I can still find humour in that. Here, Green and McBride provide us with dick jokes and profanity that are out of place with the fantasy genre (even a comedic one), and whilst that’s the point, it’s not a point made with genuine humour or cleverness. They’re just giving us dick jokes because they can, and it’s one of many things that takes you out of the fantasy story. Any fantasy comedy needs to at least halfway work as a fantasy first, so that you’re actually interested in the story and characters. Even “Holy Grail”, “Flying High” and “The Naked Gun!” still gave us at least the bare bones of a plot and characters. It really doesn’t surprise me that the dialogue was largely improvised and that there was a merest of plotlines mapped out on set. It looks that way throughout (Apparently the idea from the film was based merely on the double-meaning title, having a prince get stoned and fight dragons. It would appear that this is as far as they got with the details).

This film gives us witless lines like ‘I don’t want to be gay with you and father. I just want to stay and play with my sword and fuck shit up’. In fact, the entire dire situation can be summed up with just one word in the film’s dialogue: Fuckening. Yes, instead of “The Quickening”, McBride, Green, and Best give us the oh-so hilarious term ‘Fuckening’. ‘Coz, see, it’s got ‘fuck’ in it. Swearing is funny, har-har. They even do the impossible: It made me wish there were less minotaurs in the film. Having a guy get anally raped by a minotaur with a huge dick is among the least funny things I’ve ever seen. Yes, it was just dry-humping, but that’s only because they didn’t have the balls to actually go through with their attempt at a joke.

Even when you get away from the far too many dick jokes and (completely unfunny) gay jokes, the film’s supposed humour still isn’t there. We get a mechanical bird that is an obvious reference to “Clash of the Titans”, but once again, there’s no actual joke beyond that. I like a good spoof movie, but don’t just give me a reference (Unless it’s “Jane Austin’s Mafia”, which was overflowing with such references, but done in such a way that it was scarily accurate and genuinely funny for it). I guess the visage of Danny McBride dressed in a poofy wig and pancake makeup is meant to be a joke, but it isn’t. And since it isn’t actually a joke, it also isn’t actually funny. I know comedy is subjective, but I think we can all safely decide what a joke actually is or is not. I did spot one joke, though; Zooey Deschanel has a lovely singing voice, James Franco does not. That was a joke. Not a funny one, but a joke nonetheless.

At the end of the day, the dick and gay jokes are the major source of supposed humour here, and it’s mostly delivered by American actors with fake British accents on the level of an “SNL” sketch (Franco and Deschanel are the worst offenders, though the latter barely speaks).  And that sums up the film itself. This is a really bad “SNL” sketch with more risqué humour, and stretched to feature length. Deschanel, by the way, is cast in a role of no colour or personality and gives her no opportunity to do her infectiously idiosyncratic geek thing that I normally love. Why bother casting her at all? James Franco frustrates yet again by giving the best performance of 2010 and now one of the worst of 2011. Oscar-winner Natalie Portman is absent in the first 50 minutes or so, and would’ve been well-advised not to turn up at all. At least she genuinely attempts an English accent, and comes off best of the lot in that regard. Toby Jones comes off best in the cast overall, playing it basically straight, as a kind of Gollum without the motion capture. Charles Dance’s presence merely makes one wonder if Malcolm McDowell wasn’t taking Green’s calls, whilst Justin Theroux hams it up uninterestingly.

By and large, the film’s FX are shitballs, and it’s something that always offends me about these light-hearted, mocking medieval/fantasy films. There’s often a cheapness to them that takes you out of the story, when combined with the mocking tone (“The Princess Bride” was too snarky for my liking). I did like the five-headed snake monster, though. It stops short of greatness, but it’s not trying to be great CGI. It has a bit of a Harryhausen quality to it, and ends up looking like a giant hand, which is cool. It’s not funny, though.

The scenery and cinematography by Tim Orr are lovely, the music score is Steve Jablonsky (the remake of “Friday the 13^th”) is the most legit thing in the film, but this is lots of talented people doing untalented and unfunny things. This is possibly one of the worst films of the last ten years.

Rating: D-