Your Highness

Director: David Gordon Green
Starring: Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, James Franco and Danny McBride
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011

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Rating notes: Strong violence and crude sexual references

You have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy Your Highness. If it is pointed out that the screenplay is about half Princess Bride and half Pineapple Express, sprinkled with some Monty Python Jabberwocky medievalry, the mood thing becomes a bit clearer. Those who would like the Princess Bride spoofery may baulk at the stoner Pineapple Express language, bodily function humour and sexual innuendo and a lot that is not so innuendo. That is probably a useful bit of consumer advice.

David Gordon Green used to make rather serious minded films like George Washington and Undertow. Then he surprised his serious fan base by the mad hijinks of Pineapple Express. Now he joins with comedian Danny McBride, who is credited with co-writing the script, though the director says a lot of the dialogue was improvised (and it shows both for better and for worse). McBride sees himself and his character, Prince Theodorous, as a Middle Ages slacker who has ambitions but no drive, overshadowed by his text-book knight brother, Prince Fabious (James Franco enjoying himself), wanting to be kind without any effort. He is accompanied by a who is a mixture of misery and devotion.

The story is one of those courtly love epics. A demonic magician (Justin Theroux) has imprisoned a princess (Zoey Deschanel) and kept her under a spell. Rescued by Fabious, and acclaimed by the king (Charles Dance), she is about to become queen when she is re-captured. Fabious goes off to rescue her again and Theodorous is forced to go as well.

Because McBride is the writer and the star, he gets to show cowardice and then to be transformed into a chivalrous hero (but setting the bar rather low).

Into the quest comes a warrior vowing vengeance on the wizard who has killed her parents. While Franco plays the prince as all earnestness and smiling goodness, the warrior is played by Natalie Portman as a well-educated and spoken amazon. Which means that the performances are a conglomeration which work on the whole but there is a lot of unpredictability. Toby Jones and Damian Lewis are also in the mix for unworthy motives.

Which means then that the humour moves from daffy to raucous, to entertaining parody to a great deal of ambiguous (and unambiguous) and ambivalent sexual jokes. Old style fairy tale it isn’t.