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Kenny Powers in King Arthur’s Court
Your Highness Movie Review
Abandon hope, intelligence and good taste all ye who enter here. Your Highness is a medieval adventure comedy with Academy Award quality talent, somehow suckered into doing B-movie crude comedy amid a relentless rampaging demons, three headed snakes and the occasional mob of homicidal midgets. Imagine HBO’s Eastbound and Down meets Princess Bride on the set of Lord of the Rings and ye gets the idea of what’s happening.
James Franco stars as newly wedded Prince Fabious whose kidnapped bride Belladonna, Zooey Deschanel, provides the impetus for a quest including Fabious’ wizard weed smoking, womanizing brother Thadeous, Danny McBride, who must reaffirm his honor to avoiding banishment from the family kingdom. Also along for the epic journey to the heart of dork-ness is Thadeous’ faithful squire Courtney, Rasmus Hardiker, who stands by his man in despite being taken for granted, and even offered in sacrificial trade for a mechanical bird. To Courtney’s credit, he doth protest a little bit at that idea.
Along the way to the castle where Belladonna is being held, the trio meet Isabel, Natalie Portman, a mysterious woman with the fighting skill of a MMA champion and the body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Isabel is on a similar quest to avenge the death of her family at the same hand of the evil Leezar, the same lord of darkness who kidnapped Fabio’s Belladona. Small kingdom ‘eh?
Together the mismatched band of outmatched heroes and would be heroes follow their quest to Leezar’s bedchamber where he is to impregnate Belladonna on the long prophesized “Night of the Two Moons” to create a dragon baby that will do Leezar’s bidding to take over mankind, unless it takes after his mother. Cue the ultimate battle between good, evil and a dude who up until recently, would rather be getting stoned in a sheep meadow.
Sadly it’s not that director David Gordon Green’s and co-writers McBride and Ben Best’s banquet of banalities isn’t funny, in an awkward, bestial, and creepy way, there just aren’t enough of them. Too much screen time is wasted on elaborate battle scenes and thunderbolt throwing special effects when really the attraction here, much like on Eastbound and Down is McBride’s buffoonish swagger and the relationship between him and his quizzically unquestioning sidekicks.
Too bad for the investors, Your Highness’ profuse profanity and occasional mud covered boobs earned it an R-rating thus making it harder for the core market of junior high geeks and gamers to gain entry to the onslaught of dragon slaying, swordplay and severed penis jokes. But since lately the average movie goers IQ seems to be dropping faster than blue states on an election night map, clearly you don’t have to be 14 to enjoy a movie for 14 year olds anymore. Let ye good times roll.