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411mania.com
08 April 2011
by Jeffrey Harris
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Your Highness Review

The fantasy-adventure stoner comedy Your Highness has finally been released in theaters! But does it stand up as a comedy or fall short? 411′s Jeffrey Harris checks in with his full review!

In a slow Spring movie season, in the doldrums between Oscar and the Summer movie periods, Your Highness is just what the doctor ordered. Director David Gordon Green re-teams with two of his stars from the action/reefer hit of 2008, Pineapple Express. This time around though Green and co-writers Danny McBride and Ben Best take on a much tougher cinematic theme, that of combining comedy and medieval fantasy. You would think with a genre that has achieved such great popularity and success through films like The Lord of The Rings, it would be rife for some fun satire. Usually we can’t see much better than garbage like Epic Movie instead of more honest, truly funny attempts. Your Highness is much more in the vein of classics such as Monty Python and The Holy Grail. And sure enough not long after the prologue we are treated to an animated pictorial opening credits sequence that is eerily Terry Gilliam-esque and Flying Circus.

Your Highness stars Kenny Powers himself, McBride, as the ne’er do well Prince Thadeous of Mourn. Thadeous is unfortunately constantly of the shadow of his older goldenboy brother and heir to the throne, Fabious (Franco). The dashing Fabious is the pride and joy of their father, King Tallious (Dance), while Thadeous is a constant disappointment as he’s usually out womanizing the ladies, getting into mischief with his man-servant Courtney (Hardiker), or smoking the “sticky wicky.” Fabious has just returned from a quest slaying the cyclops monster of an evil wizard and rescuing the virginal princess, Belladonna (Deschanel), now betrothed to Fabious as his bride. Before the nuptials can be finished and marriage consummated, the evil wizard Leezar (Theroux), shows up to take back Belladonna. Leezar plans on fulfilling an ancient prophecy with Belladonna on impregnating a virgin during a lunar eclipse in order to create a dragon that will be under Leezar’s control. And so King Tallious charges the perpetual disappointment of Thadeous to go on a quest with Fabious to save Belladonna and destroy Leezar. Well . . . balls.

Fabious, Thadeous, and Courtney are later joined in their quest by the bloodthirsty warrioress, Isabel (Portman), who Thadeous can’t help but coveting much to Isabel’s cold bemusement. Isabel also has business to settle with Leezar as well, as Leezar’s three mothers butchered Isabel’s brothers. Not only that, but Isabel also belongs to a holy order of knights charged with the task of preventing evil wizards from fulfilling the ancient prophecy of blanking to make dragons.

Your Highness works so well because despite being a hysterical, outrageous, and fantasy-skewering comedy it never takes the gags too. The humor is much more in the realm of material like Monty Python or say Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs though the material never really goes so far as breaking the fourth wall and showing the movie set and production crew like the latter. The story and humor always stay in the world in which it is firmly established and comes more from the situations and characters rather than just insterting random pop-culture references and lame lookalikes and imitators like the execrable spoofs from Friedberg and Seltzer. Your Highness actually addresses the sort of 800 lb. gorillas of fantasy movies without outright referencing or pointing at them, specifically in the form of poking at the rather homoerotic tone and nature of the male heroes of these stories seemingly at the same time contradictory to their macho heroics and apparent heterosexuality. While Fabious claims to love and want to marry a woman, his behavior appears to suggest swinging the other side as well.

The other thing that works about Your Highness is the action. As much as this is a comedy, it still wants to be a fantasy adventure as well. The production values, visuals, and action set pieces are all extremely well done and look polished and top notch. The movie has an R-rating and has no problem in showing it which is also refreshing so the action scenes don’t mind getting a little more outrageously bloody and gory. Your Highness reinforces the rules of the genre as much as it lampoons them and walks the line of the fence rather than completely going overboard.

The performances are all fantastic and apt. McBride is in top form here with his makeshift British accent which is right at home in this story. Franco, an underrated comedic performer in his own right, is more than able to work in tandem with McBride. The show-stealers are unequivocally Theroux as the villain Leezar and Hardiker as Courtney. I couldn’t get enough of Leezar who had the best lines and delivery of the movie. Damian Lewis, typically more of a dramatic performer, does a nice subtle turn here as the latently homosexual and agitated fellow knight of Fabious, Boremont.

Now that we have a movie like Your Highness, my hope and wish is that decent filmmakers won’t be so afraid about using fantasy and comedy together. As much as I love fantasy, it’s still a genre rife for satire just as Monty Python has shown before in the ’70′s.

The 411: Besides the humor and compelling action sequences, Your Highness will also likely be the most quotable movie of the year. If there is any mark of a great movie, it is how quotable it will be later on, and Your Highness has that in spades. Your Highness delivers outrageous comedy and great action in a fantasy wrapping. Franco is not suited for the Academy Awards as this material is more up his alley. McBride is definitely starting to live up to the potential that Will Ferrell saw in him after he picked up The Foot Fist Way. I can also now forgive McBride for Land of The Lost, so use the momentum in good health Mr. Powers.