As a five-minute sketch for Funny or Die or some other online site, “Your Highness” is a solid comedy winner. As a 90-minute movie … well, hit and miss.
The main instigator here is Danny McBride, the knockabout drawler who usually plays second bananas. McBride co-wrote the script with his “Eastbound & Down” partner Ben Best, and their unlikely subject is medieval sword and sorcery pictures.
Two of McBride’s cohorts on “Pineapple Express,” James Franco and director David Gordon Green, are also along for this piece of ye olde spoofery, which actually brings in magical swords, a minotaur and a five-headed dragon shaped like a hand.
Franco plays the favored prince of the land, McBride his cowardly slugabout of a brother. When Franco’s virginal fiance (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux), the two brothers march shoulder to shoulder, more or less, on a crusade to rescue her.
They are joined by another crusader, played by recent Oscar-winner Natalie Portman. Yes, you read that right. But hey, after suffering through “Black Swan,” surely Portman deserved a vacation.
A lot of “Your Highness” consists of tossing a particular swear word into various lines of dialogue, a comic strategy that begins to wear out its welcome about, oh, 10 minutes or so into the action.
If the script is flimsy, McBride maintains his usual level of deluded vanity and wanton cruelty, which is generally good for a few laughs.
James Franco, who was so superbly tuned-in for his stoner performance in “Pineapple Express,” looks like he’s still hosting the Oscars here. Something this silly needs to be played deadpan, but Franco rarely bothers to keep a straight face.
Because David Gordon Green began his career with small, sensitive films such as “George Washington” and “All the Real Girls,” you sometimes wonder what he’s thinking when he stages scenes involving minotaur sex or an amphibious wizard that smokes a hookah.
As weird as those ideas are, the only real question with a movie like this is: Is it funny? And “Your Highness” is just barely funny enough to get away with its nonstop raunchiness, despite how sloppy it generally is.
And boy, it is raunchy. The many references to genitals make the film sound like a medical textbook. Knighthood may never be the same.
“Your Highness”
A pair of princely brothers (Danny McBride, James Franco) go on a quest in this raunchy medieval spoof, which teeters between the funny and the tiresome. Natalie Portman co-stars in this flimsy comedy, which is rife with variations on the f-word and references to genitals.
Rating: R, for language, nudity, violence, subject matter.
Showing: Cinnebarre, Everett Stadium, Stanwood, Meridian, Metro, Thornton Place, Woodinville, Cascade Mall.
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