In Your Highness, big fat man-child Danny McBride - part Jack Black, part the-boss-from-the-IT Crowd - stars as big fat man-child Thadeous, the younger inept, incompetent, probably incontinent brother of Fabious (James Franco), the kingdom's heroic prince. The cast is surprisingly starry, with a couple of Hollywood's finest in Natalie Portman (swoon!) and Zooey Deschanel (don't ever get old!) also adding further star-power, not to mention low-cut tops. Fantasy quest films and literary traditions are spoofed, and sometimes even used straight, good-naturedly in director David Gordon Green's successor to stoner hit Pineapple Express.
The whole film revolves around McBride's spiel, and if you don't like him it can probably be guaranteed that you will not like this film. There is nothing nuanced about this type of comedy; it relies almost entirely, somewhat bizarrely, on 'fuck' sounding funny against the typically portentious olde worlde fantasy speak that the characters spew. Is it funny? I don't think any critic is in a position to say what is and isn't funny, such are the disparities in senses of humour, so all I can give is personal experience: it works to some extent, but it does begin to wear thin. There is one particularly fantastic use of fuck though, where upon an event called 'the fuckening' occurs when two moons are aligned and if a virginal maiden (in this case Deschanel) gets ravaged then the world falls into darkness. Or something.
It's kind of strange how great the dearth of actual non-fuck-related gags is. They're almost non existent. Aside from McBride, the bad guy Leezar (an unrecognisable Justin Theroux) and the weedy squire Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) the other characters play it very straight, most of the time. The writers seemed undecided how many laughs they wanted to give Portman and Franco; perhaps because they are not renowned for comedic roles, but whatever the reason there are definite balance issues.
Other discrepancies include the uneven parodic tone; I'm not even sure if it is in fact a parody. There are several classic fantasy elements given only minor superficial comic twists, for instance the gladiatorial arena, or the labyrinth scene. There are also other elements outside the fantasy oeuvre that are referenced; the very premise of a virginal bride and cosmic alignment is taken from the gothic horror tradition; the aforementioned labyrinth scene from Greek mythology - both seem to be going against what the film is aiming for.
I really wanted to really like Your Highness. I wanted it to be a perfectly judged pile of offensive, funny crap, and while it could be very funny, depending on your own personal taste, this only papers over the fact that it is inconsistent and sometimes a bit muddled. Moments of brilliantly quotable silliness are tempered by getting the basics wrong.
I've decided star ratings are worthless, so henceforth all reviews will just be thumbs up or thumbs down; Your Highness gets a thumbs up.
P.S sorry for not blogging for ages, I've had no interesting thoughts in a while. Easy stuff like reviews might have to fill in for more interesting things.
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