Your Highness Film Review (2011)

1 hr. 42 mins.

Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, Toby Jones, Charles Dance

Directed by: David Gordon Green

MPAA Rating: R

Critic's Rating: ** stars (out of 4 stars)

Oscar-winner Natalie Portman ("Black Swan") and Oscar nominee and co-host James Franco ("127 Hours") had already starred in an overblown costume clunker this year known as the 83^rd Academy Awards ceremony back in late February 2011. Now skip a couple of months later and the noted performers are involved in another costume clunker of a different kind-in the witless medieval mishap Your Highness.

A faceless and raunchy send up of noble medieval cinema, Your Highness is a historical hiccup posing as an irreverent hot-button comedy. Director David Gordon Green ("Pineapple Express") and screenwriters Danny McBride (doing double duty as writer and star) and Ben Best painfully piece together this stilted stoner vehicle. The flaccid festivities are set up against the backdrop of dungeons, dragons, damsels, sandals, swords and swear words. Basically this pseudo-pithy period piece winks its congested eye at the absurdity of this genre where sword-swinging noblemen ruled with over-the-top courage and conviction. Although Your Highness wants to pile on the corrosive and cockeyed silliness that exists so foolishly Green's dippy direction never allows the lame jokes and gags to filter properly in its outlandish presentation.

Sure, there are a few laughs that register here and there. But for the most part, Your Highness strains for some meager chuckles that are often blunt, recycled and fittingly flat in some instances. The transparent naughtiness of the carousing comedy takes its toll annoyingly. As with today's routine R-rated comedies Your Highness pretty much commits the same kind of tactical cluelessness-generic and insufferable characterizations, cheesy special effects, gaudy set designs, tiresome gay and sexual references and lazy lowbrow humor as its silly-minded signature. The movie arbitrarily digs for its outrageousness but the source of the fettered funniness never materializes beyond a long and exhausting semi-snickering session of boobs, bongs and other baseless banality.

The theme is sibling rivalry of sorts in the Kingdom of Mourn where Prince Fabious (James Franco, Green's "Pineapple Express" participant) is a virtuous royal icon back from his latest quest with wife-to-be Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) in tow. However, Fabious's younger brother Thadeous (Danny McBride) is a price of another sordid ilk-he's quest-phobic and prefers drinking, smoking and womanizing to anything remotely honorable. Let's face it...confronting fire-breathing dragons just isn't Prince Thadeous's lifestyle.

Prince Fabious wants to commit to Belladonna and plans on asking for her hand in marriage. This agenda, however, will be delayed until Fabious figures out a way to rescue his beloved Belladonna from the dastardly clutches of evil warlock Leezar (Justin Theroux) from whom Fabious previously released Belladonna from his hold.

As Fabious prepares for his mission to reunite with the abducted Belladonna, his father King Tallious (Charles Dance) orders the slacker Thadeous to help out his disciplined big brother on this particular quest to save the absent Belladonna. The ultimatum is quite clear: either the shiftless Thadeous assists Fabious or he is banished from the kingdom...plain and simple.

So off goes the brotherly brawlers as their twisted adventures begin to unfold. Along the way as the mayhem and madness unravels they encounter all sorts of crazy confrontations and kooky characterizations. A no-nonsense, curvaceous chronic cursing archer named Isabel (Natalie Portman) joins the siblings as she searches for her own brand of redemption. A perverted compact-sized creature with wizard-like features tags along with this merry band of disjointed avengers. Additionally, they come across a sexually-aroused minotaur, big breasted Amazon women and a very discontented pet dragon. Are your sides bursting with laughter yet?

In short, Your Highness staggers along in eye-rolling fashion amid the dunderheaded dialogue ("You smell like the underside of a sheep's scrotum") and flimsy fantasy-style showdowns. The playful potency of the profanity feels forced and gimmicky. The movie tries hard to maintain its loose-minded swagger courtesy of McBride's riff raffish rogue but he grates on the nerves more so than convey a conniving cad with offbeat fratboy charisma. Portman has some aimless fun as an acid-tongued diva ready to point her arrow at a disagreeable moving target. Still, should she decide to appear in more of these pointless makeshift vehicles such as Your Highness her Academy Award may need to be auctioned off at a Sherman Oaks garage sale. Meanwhile, Franco languishes in this dungeons and dragons dud as if he's waiting for a delayed flight to Singapore.

Skillful raunchfest comedies have a daring sense of cynicism, hilarious insight and more important...traces of unexpected heart and soul. Sadly, Your Highness never musters up anything credible or solid beyond its nagging penchant for empty idiocy. The thought of dropping an occasional F-bomb in a potty-mouthed period piece can garner only so many repetitive grins and grunts before the bit wears out its welcome.