I’ve always said James Franco was comedy gold. He gets it! Danny McBride, same for him, actually even more so. He gets it. Even Natalie Portman has being trying to lighten her performances of late and she too probably gets it..to some degree. As for me? Well…I don’t get Your Highness, and I don’t think you will either, unfortunately.
I had really high hopes for this. I mean what could go wrong when you have Kenny Fuckin Powers, Queen Amidala’s chastity belt encased ass and The Green Goblin’s son running riot with medieval hijinks and perverted wizards. Alot actually. Now, the story here is one that’s not going to involve any concentration what so ever. It’s the usual cliché of a Prince’s bride being kidnapped by a bad ass wizard (played by Justin Theroux) and our hapless heroes thundering off the rescue her. Our hapless heroes consist of Fabious (Franco) the gorgeous, brave and daring prince and his brother Thadeous (McBride) the useless, no hoper who might just try and become a hero like his brother. So…our heroes thunder off on the quest to save the lovely maiden and kick some wizard ass. On their journey they bump into Isabel (Portman) who has arrived straight out of Lord of the Rings who also happens to be wanting a piece of wizard ass to kick. And that’s it.
First problem up is the editing of the whole thing. There is no flow to movie. It’s scene after scene just lumped into together and half the time the edit’s were pretty damn raw. Maybe it was the reels I saw, but none the less, it was rough as a badgers arse. So, I’ll let that slide to a point just in case it was the cinema. The characters have zero chemistry between them, and that’s probably because they’re all leads as opposed to one lead and a few supporting. You can argue that McBride isn’t a leading man, but this paints him in a different light completely. Next up are the special effects. While the 5 headed snake thing and the well hung Minotaur are incredibly well done, the rest of the effects are look like they are straight out of Adobe After Effects. Nothing wrong with that at all, it’s a great piece of software, but at least make the shit look right on screen. Methinks must of the budget was blown on snakes and Minotaur mickey’s. As for the funny side of things? Well, I was in a relatively large cinema which was about 75% full. 2 Laughs were heard from start to finish. None of them mine. The constant “fucks” and occasional gross out moments get too much too quickly and it’s overload completely. So much so, that you find yourself sighing and getting quite bored, very quickly. Not even Natalie Portman’s ass can save it!
At only 102 minutes, you’d expect Your Highness to be a pleasure to watch. But it’s disjointed, uncharismatic ways will leave you feeling like it was 202 minutes. Maybe it’s the whole comedic medieval thing is the biggest problem. Maybe the two genres don’t go together, but then you can make an argument for the Python stuff which most agree does work. Either way, the whole thing feel’s butchered by a few studio execs and that leads me to believe this could have been a whole lot worse than it is. Overall, it’s a missed opportunity, it doesn’t bring the laughs. Which, considering it’s cast, is a damn shame!
