Directed by: David Gordon Green
Cast: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel
Duration: 102 minutes
Cert: 16
Opens April 13th 2011
Set the scene.. Two Princes, Fabious and Thadeous. Fabious (Franco) is a dashing hero, who goes on quests to keep his fathers kingdom safe. The stuff fairytales are made of. Thadeous, not so much. He’s a lazy ass who is quite happy with his life within the walls of his father’s kingdom.
All that changes for Thadeous when his brothers bride-to-be was magically stolen from Fabious at their wedding. Together the two brothers, including a reluctant Thadeous, embark on a quest to find and save Belladonna (Deschanel) from the evil, Leezar (Justin Theroux) who wants to fulfil and ancient prophecy. Can Thadeous Man up and go from zero to hero?
The concept behind ‘Your Highness‘ is quite good. When we see the medieval setting, we immediately expect to hear Shakespeare’s English throughout. Instead the medieval and modern worlds collide through the use of modern curse words, references to the wizards magic weed and Simon, the mechanical bird. Like, how would that work?
Director David Gordon Green does a good job of showing how the two could exist together. The collision of the language, especially through the dialogue used by McBride provides the majority of the humour in the story. While seemingly innocent language is filled with double – entendres.
The funny parts of this film are very funny and if they wanted this could work really well as a series of sketches in a comedy show. This is very close to being a spoof without actually being one. There are times though, throughout the movie when something happens to move the story along and you realize you haven’t laughed in a while. It’s these parts that let the overall movie down.
This is looking firmly at the American Pie audience. Just naughty enough without being too over the top. It’s an enjoyable watch but it won’t set the movie world alight, that won’t stop many guys from quoting it this time next week.
The majority of the jokes and gags are clever, its just holes in the script that let the overall film down. There’s enough here though to keep the occasional weekend movie go-er happy.