How did this happen?
You combine three of the most potentially enjoyable genres (i.e. the stoner flick, the buddy flick, and the fantasy-adventure) with a terrific director (David Gordon Green) and a great cast (nearly everyone in Your Highness). Surely that's a recipe for great success?
Wrong.
Your Highness is one of the grimmest cinema experiences I've had in a long time, made even more deadening because of the occasional glimmers of what could have been.
In other words, it's the worst kind of "worst" film: the one that's not so catastrophically bad you can sink back and enjoy the unfolding disaster, but instead just middlingly bad, with a severe case of delusions of grandeur.
Given the respect that "writers" (much of the dialogue was improvised, and it shows) Danny McBride and Ben Best have shown any of their tenets of their chosen genres, I should really just describe the plot as "blah blah some shit happens blah blah dud stoner joke blah blah boobies blah".
But I'm not as much of an asshole as they are, so here goes: Prince Thaddeous (McBride) is a disappointment to his kingdom. We get the drift after a blisteringly unfunny prologue in which he and his offsider Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) argue with some dwarfs (yes, really).
Returning home, he manages to stuff up again when he misses the wedding of his brother, the far more "impressive" Prince Fabious (James Franco), to Belladonna (a perplexed Zooey Deschanel).
The wedding, however, is derailed when the Evil Wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux) turns up and starts throwing lightning bolts around before stealing Belladonna away to his castle.
From there it's up to Thaddeous and Fabious to join forces and do some shit and maybe walk down this lane andzzz... sorry, um... they head off to find the Sword Of Unicorn in a labyrinth in order to slay Leezar and call off the prophecy.
Sorry, I forgot to mention the prophecy, which states that, for no real reason at all, during a two-moon eclipse, he will have sex with a virgin, who will then give birth to a dragon. Yep.
Along the way they run into the medieval-WonderBra-wearing warrior Isabel (Natalie Portman), who - surprise! - is also after Leezar. Or his mother. Or the script editor.
This is a terribly depressing film. The jokes are mostly schoolyard level (particularly of the "hurr hurr that's gay" variety), the stoner aspect serves no purpose or humour other than "hey look, they're smoking weed!" and the action sequences are frenetic and overdone.
Shot mostly in Ireland, there are some beautiful landscapes and impressive sweeping vistas, but they're wasted here. Occasional moments of comically improbable gore inspire a few guffaws, but only due to a craving for something, anything, vaguely cathartic.
Your Highness feels less like a film written while high than one written via text message. How else can you explain a fey, diaper-wearing savage (John Fricker) who surrounds himself with naked chicks (boobies!!) and controls a five-headed hydra by plunging his hand into a cauldron of what looks like Campbell's pumpkin soup?
Given the amount of the film that was improvised, the quality of the dialogue rests squarely on the talent of the individual actors. Thus, Portman remains unsullied by her surroundings as Isabel, and Theroux is hysterical as Leezar (his Highlander-aping name for Belladonna's deflowering is the film's best gag).
In fact I found myself leaning enthusiastically toward the screen whenever Theroux appeared, as though imploring him to stay there just a few moments longer.
As director, Green was clearly out to lunch; everyone mills about doing a good impression of a Year 10 drama class' improv lesson. You may find yourself longing for the "glory days" of Willow and Krull.
The failure of Your Highness is particularly galling for me - a D&D-playing fantasy-adventure nut well versed in, ahem, magical herbalism - as I'd been eagerly anticipating the release of this film, set to combine so many of my interests, for ages. The disappointment is cutting.
It's like having been watching the Christmas tree like a hawk for a week, wondering what the large present addressed to you contains - only to wake up on Christmas morning and discover that it's a Cornflakes box containing a cup of cold sick.
It's like going at the dragon with your scimitar but then rolling a 6 and accidentally cutting off your own leg.
It's like finding out your bong... fuck it, Your Highness just sucks. Puff puff pass.
- Two stars
Your Highness is in cinemas today, Thursday May 12.