Review by Ryan Casey

Now I knew that Your Highness wasn’t going to be a masterpiece, but I was looking forward to a bit of mild, harmless entertainment, from the same team that brought us 'Pineapple Express'. The film stars and is written by Danny McBride who plays Prince Thadious, a lazy failure who is the younger brother of Prince Fabious, a brave, handsome warrior, played by James Franco. Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel also feature as love interests. This relatively impressive cast lead me to believe that Your Highness would be an entertaining comedy. How juvenile of me.

PLOT SYNOPSIS
Your Highness centres on Prince Thadious, who is jealous of his brother Fabious and the hero status that he possesses. Fabious returns triumphant after slaying a Cyclops, bringing not only the beast's head home as a trophy, but his bride to be; Bellandona (Zooey Deschanel). Thadious is to be Fabious’s best man, but rather than face his responsibilities he runs off to get stoned in a field with some sheep and odd looking men.

Meanwhile the wedding is gate-crashed by an evil warlock called Leezar (Justin Theroux) who kidnaps Belladona, obviously so he can get his leg over when the two moons meet, and impregnate her with a dragon, duh! Thadious returns and is forced by his father King Tallious (Charles Dance) to join his brother on a quest to rescue the damsel in distress. On their adventure they bump into; Natalie Portman as the tenacious rogue, Isabel, a Minotaur with a big cock and a stoned pervert squid wizard.
I’m guessing the point of all this was to help Thadious realise the error of his ways, and become a better man? All it did for me was give me a headache.

The film feels like it is the brain child of a group of school boys who inbetween wanking, smoking weed and laughing at toilet humour on YouTube, decided it would be funny to make a movie where swearing in abundance and making more cock references than a ‘Carry On’ movie would be hilarious in the style of a classic fantasy quest.

In accordance with this, the script for Your Highness is nothing more than terrible. Nonsense dialogue, accompanied by relentless swearing, toilet humour, unnecessary crudeness and tedious stoner gags, all band together to make a thoroughly boring hour and fifty minutes. It was like watching a feature length episode of ‘Eurotrash’, except with even worse British accents.

The film is marketed as a comedy; but I could count on one finger how many times Your Highness made the tiniest muscles in my face slightly tighten in what could only be described as a smirk. The writing is extremely lazy, whenever there is potential to form a clever witticism, it is quashed by the punch line being a thoughtless profanity. For those who may think I’m ranting like a socially detached grandparent, I can appreciate that all mentioned can make for good comedy, but only if the timing and execution is right and proper, in the case of Your Highness it simply is not.

The majority of the cast is made up of established and celebrated actors, all of whom have starred in previous roles that I have enjoyed, making it hard to believe how flat all the on screen performances are. Every character is un-believable; the manner in which they develop is also extremely predictable, making the narrative of the film weak and un-inspiring. In fact, after twenty minutes of this medieval manure stain, I knew it wouldn’t get any better and really wanted to stop watching it. Although I would have loved to have seen the moment Natalie Portman watched the film back and realised “What the fuck have I done?”

The quality of English accents in Your Highness is downright atrocious, the worst of which coming from James Franco, who sounds like a poverty stricken Austin Powers. The main antagonist of the film, Leezar, is extraordinarily crap. One of the worst movie villains I’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing. The closest comparison I can muster for Your Highness is a mix of ‘Scary Movie ‘style humour  with the adventure of ‘Stardust’, but I’m not sure that in any ‘cock’ssesed mind that this film works on any level.

RATING
Danny McBride, in future leave the writing to someone else. Royally fucked off after spending nearly two hours of my life watching this cock fuelled, potty mouthed, mind numbing, badly acted, cringe worthy pile of fantasy horse manure! 0.5 out of 5 stars.