Your Highness (2011)

Characters

• Thadeous: A prince that does nothing but party. Played by Danny McBride (Red in Pineapple Express)
• Fabious: Thadeous's older brother; a valiant prince who has succeeded on many quests. Played by James Franco (Aron Ralston in 127 Hours)
• Courtney: Thadeous's lackey. Played by Rasmus Hardiker
• Isabel: A questing warrior. Played by Natalie Portman (Nina in Black Swan)
• Belladonna: Fabious's fiancé; kidnapped and needs to be rescued. Played by Zooey Deschanel (Trillian in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
• Leezar: An evil sorcerer who kidnapped Belladonna. Played by Justin Therous (Timothy Bryce in American Psycho)

Plot

Thadeous parties constantly and is jealous of Fabious's fame and skill. Fabious returns for a quest with his new bride-to-be, Belladonna. During the wedding, Leezar appears and kidnaps Belladonna. In a few days, he will use her to become extremely powerful and take over the world.

When Fabious announces that he will quest to rescue her, the king says that Thadeous is old enough to go with Fabious. If he doesn't, he will be banished from the kingdom. Thadeous begrudgingly joins the party.

Near the beginning of the trek, the rest of the party betrays Thadeous, Fabious, and Courtney, leaving them to quest alone. Later they are joined by Isabel on a quest of revenge. Together, they must defeat Leezar to save Belladonna and the world.

Review

I first heard of Your Highness at New York Comic Con. It sounded interesting to me. When I first saw trailers for Your Highness, I thought it was going to be a Jack Black movie set in the middle ages without Jack Black. I was wrong.

During the opening credits, I lost hope in this movie. It is written, produced, and stars Danny McBride. Generally, when one person takes that many roles, it's because no one else thought it was good enough to invest in it.

Your Highness is like a very juvenile version of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, a TV series that I so badly want to like but fails me. For those unfamiliar with the show, another analogy would be that the movie follows a format similar to a fantasy version of Shawn of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but all of the humor is replaced with dick jokes and cursing. I'm normally a fan of that humor, but Your Highness misses the mark.

Rather than using actual jokes, Your Highness's humor consists of people looking at the camera and saying, "Shit." This was funny once or twice toward the beginning of the movie, but after the shock value is lost, it becomes repetitive. The huge apocalyptic event the party is trying to stop is called "the Fuckening." This is only slightly funny if you couple that with the cheesy effects and take it as a Highlander 2 reference.

The movie starts off pretty terribly, but I have to say that it starts to get better later in the movie. There are actual jokes. If you don't mind vulgarity, it's funny. The problem is that these jokes are sparse separated by the same repetitive cursing.

Your Highness markets itself as a stoner comedy, but it's much closer to a teen movie in the vein of Scary Movie. Knowing that, there is a guarantee that a penis will be seen at some point in the movie for shock comedy. Thadeous ends up wearing one around his neck, but the execution was actually funny, so, although predictable, was welcomed.

Ultimately, Your Highness had potential but failed. Hopefully, Danny McBride will learn for this movie and succeed next time. I look forward to giving his next movie a chance, but I wouldn't recommend this one.

Also, one of my friends only saw this because you get to see Natalie Portman's ass in this movie. So, there's that.

Final Verdict - 2/5