Your Highness review
Filmmaker David Gordon Green has one of the strangest career trajectories of anyone working in film today. After starting his career with 4 quiet dramas included the Terrence Malick influenced “George Washington” and the Terrence Malick produced “Undertow,” he took a sharp left turn in 2008 with the Judd Apatow produced stoner-comedy “Pineapple Express.” It seemed like a really strange decision at the time (and though the results were mixed) the change seemed to suit him and he’s yet to look back. He’s also been a producer on friend/star Danny McBride’s HBO series “Eastbound & Down” as well as director on McBride and ‘Eastbound’ co-writer Ben Best’s latest fantasy stoner epic “Your Highness.”
It feels like I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time (probably because I have been) so it’s a shame to admit that the film doesn’t really work. McBride and James Franco star as brothers/princes on a quest to retrieve Franco’s bride-to-be (Zooey Deschanel) from an evil wizard (Justin Theroux). Along the way they come across a tough archeress (Natalie Portman) on a quest of her own as well as minotaurs, temptresses and a 5 headed beast. Save McBride and Theroux the rest of the cast play their roles relatively straight so each step of the adventure begins to drag. The action scenes are shot too closely (and confusingly) and usually not played for comedy, and anything involving special effects ends up just being a bore.
The best things about “Pineapple Express” were Franco being unexpectedly cast in the stoner role (instead of the straight man) and the sparing and hilarious use of McBride. This film reverses all of that, turning Franco back into the bland (for the most part) lead and making McBride’s bumbling character the center of the film. Unfortunately it just doesn’t work. I thought of both “The Princess Bride” and “Ghostbusters” as examples of genre films that were also comedies that managed to bridge the gap successfully but this film doesn’t come close. If the film was going to be stupid it probably should have just gone all the way.
Like Universal’s last genre mashup “Paul,” I love everyone involved with the film so it’s disappointing when the laughs are few and far between. (Seriously, most of the good jokes are in the trailer.) I have to credit Universal for twice now rolling the dice on talented filmmakers/cast and letting them do their thing, unfortunately twice now they’ve been let down by the middling results. “Your Highness” admirably attempts to mash up a straight-faced (albeit cheesy) fantasy film like “Krull” with McBrides crude sense of humor. Unfortunately the result is a film that’s neither as funny as you want it to be nor are you invested whatsoever in the story.
