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As we have experienced on several occasions throughout particularly the 1970s and 1980s, medieval fantasy-adventure stories with lively-related humour have charmed us all with its highly magical, exciting and warm nature and are the particular genres that almost completely define ‘entertainment’ when it comes to watching films. So, due to the theme and the majority of cast members within the film, Your Highness looked like it could be something worthwhile but having received an overwhelmingly negative critical reception, it turned out a very corny, unrealistic, and plain stupid disappointment that wasn’t even funny or entertaining to watch and almost became an agonizingly painful film that is one of the worst films of 2011.
Having experienced the magic and the humour within adventurous fantasy-comedies such as The Princess Bride and the Monty Python series, those particular aspects within Your Highness really went over the top as the humour was needlessly corny with such inappropriately vulgar lines. So, as a result of this, it really is not a comedy seeing as it doesn’t achieve either sides of humour to entertain its target audience and it totally ruined the realistic feeling of embarking on an adventure. As far as the quest is concerned, it really was not anything like that we hadn’t witnessed time and time again as it uses numerous references from historical stories based upon legends such as Robin Hood and King Arthur and attempts to mix the Monty Python like humour but massively fails to do so.
Having already directed 2008 hit Pineapple Express, director David Gordon Green returns to the comedy genre and attempts to make another hit. However, due to the atrocious script from Danny McBride and Ben Best and even the terrible acting and story, it is a huge miss and would perhaps consider calling it almost as bad as the painfully awful “comedies” from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. In films like this, a cast and a crew either really take the film seriously or just go into making it like it is only a bit of fun. In Your Highness’ case, it is something that is definitely not something to take seriously but if it actually had funnier jokes, it really would have been something really fun to watch.
If you could compare Danny McBride and his humourous ways as an actor, he would have identical characteristics to how British actor James Corden acts in the films that he is part of. Corden’s unnecessarily corny humour is used in comedy-horror Lesbian Vampire Killers and resulted in an un-funny and laughably awful film. However, it is even worse with Your Highness as McBride takes the style of humour and the fun, adventurous journeys and virtually spits on them, so as a whole his performance did not work and felt unrealistic from the get-go. Alongside, Danny McBride were two young actors in their 30s who a few months before the release of Your Highness were Academy Award nominees: Natalie Portman (winner) and James Franco. So, after earning that and now going from that to this, neither of them could sink any lower as both of them give shockingly terrible performances!
James Franco had previously starred in Pineapple Express alongside Danny McBride with David Gordon Green as director, but he really flops here! He may have become a charming actor in general in most recent years (especially with his underrated role as James Dean in TV-film bio-pic) but his role in Your Highness is almost like McBride’s – incredibly weak with almost completely inappropriate vulgar that simply is not funny. As for Natalie Portman, there are some particular moments that are jaw-dropping and that is literally about it for her. Zooey Deschanel makes an appearance in the film too and again, she delivers a really bad performance too. It’s perhaps with how it’s written and the tone of the story that makes the actors bad in Your Highness, but there is one slight positive about them appearing in this film: they add some slight sophistication to it so due to this and that they are both Hollywood stars, this would become more attracted publicly.
Overall, Your Highness is unsurprisingly but at the same time shockingly an absolutely terrible film that is just not funny or adventurous to watch in the slightest. Hopefully Franco, Portman and Deschanel have learned their lessons from this one and will never part of anything like this ever again. To be honest, you’ve really got to be someone who actually understands and is entertained by corny humour that is involved in Your Highness to get the full enjoyment from it. So, although it looked good with fabulous costumes and cinematography, that didn’t even same the film from disaster and can now referred as one of the most annoying films that you’ll ever see.
2/10
