There’s a general rule of thumb to use when seeing comedies — if you can count the number of times you laugh on one hand, the movie wasn’t funny. If you can count the number of times you laughed on one thumb, it was atrocious.
And once is the number of times I laughed during Your Highness (full disclosure, it was a boob joke), one of the least enjoyable movies I’ve ever seen in a theater.
Danny McBride stars as Thadeous, a prince in some medieval kingdom far, far away, but not far enough. Thadeous is a lazy slob and lives in the shadow of his gallant brother Fabious (James Franco), who returns from his latest heroic quest with a bride-to-be Belladona (Zooey Deschanel, who unfortunately does sing in this).
The pair’s big day is sadly interrupted when an evil wizard kidnaps Belladona, intending to rape her when the two Moons converge, impregnating her with a dragon that will give him unequalled power (you read that right). Thadeus must man up and join his brother on the quest to save Belladona, which will be fraught with pedophilic Great Wise Wizards, homicidal nymphs and horny minotaurs.
Honestly, it’s hard to know where to begin with this. I’d describe it as the Monty Python episode from hell, a full-body dry heave, a ghastly medieval concoction of tongue-in-cheek, juvenile self-satisfaction. Just plain humorless.
This could be said for a lot of movies of today, but it really is unbelievable that Universal gave this script, written by McBride, the green light in the first place.
How it could have possibly been any better on paper is mind-boggling. The “jokes” are all based off of saying the f-word in the middle of a should-be serious conversation with a funny accent.
The saddest part of this show is that director David Gordon Green is so much better than this, evidenced by his brilliant George Washington, possibly the best directorial debut in the last decade. Figuring out how he’s spiraled down to directing Franco and McBride in comedies like this and Pineapple Express causes me migraines.
Gordon Green isn’t the only talented casualty; Natalie Portman somehow finds herself in Your Highness, and at one point is presented with a giant minotaur penis as a trophy. Not quite an Oscar, but close.
So please, just stay away from this half-baked mess. Your Highness is supposed to be a lampoon of the quest fantasy genre; instead, it feels like one of those movies Mystery Science Theater would make fun of if it were called Medieval Science Theater.
—Cameron Dunbar is a sophomore studying journalism. Let him eat cake at cd211209@ohiou.edu.
@ThePostCulture
