By Joshua Knopp/managing editor
In stark contrast to the closet full of push-up bras the film seemingly went through, Your Highness is probably the flattest thing to come out this year.
Prince Thadeous (Danny McBride) returns home from failing to get a treaty with a neighboring dwarf kingdom and is met with ridicule. The ridicule is short-lived as his older brother, Fabious (James Franco), draws attention to himself by returning with a slain cyclops and a fiancée (Zooey Deschanel). The next day, as the two are being married, Leezar (Justin Theroux), a warlock, arrives and steals Belladonna (Deschanel) away. Fabious resolves to get her back before Leezar can impregnate her with a large dragon. Their father decides that Thadeous must join him.
This movie is silly and filled with pointless things. The flaws all lead directly back to McBride’s porous writing skill. Gags include a perverted Yoda knockoff, a harem with baby powder all over each woman and a sexually confused minotaur. Belladonna’s virginity is referred to repeatedly not as a traditional film symbol of purity and innocence but because it makes her seem sexier. The princes’ allies betray them because Fabious picked his brother as his best man — come on!
Looking on McBride’s film history, it’s not really any surprise that his first big-budget writing (and producing) role is this unfunny. The actor drew most of his exposure from Superbad, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder and Due Date, to all of which apply the phrase “pot helps.” But where these films are funny on their own legs, Your Highness isn’t. The movies are like trips when put in sequence — the first is a life experience, the next few are incredibly fun, but the last (and any others after it) is just a boring ride through states of consciousness that just aren’t as much fun as they used to be.
McBride’s placid script is left unsupported by flat direction and dull visual effects. Franco, Deschanel and Natalie Portman give performances too good for the film surrounding them but aren’t anything to write home about.
The stoner movie will never die, but comedies have to pander to a wider audience. If you’re in the right state of mind, Your Highness could be all right. But the fact is, child molestation jokes and randomly placed vulgarities just aren’t funny.