Review: Your Highness

Pineapple Express director, David Gordon Green’s newest feature, Your Highness reunites stars James Franco and Danny McBride in a medieval fantasy setting. The film follows Prince Fabious (Franco) returning home after his latest quest where he has saved beautiful maiden (Zooey Deschanel), it is not long after until she is kidnapped again by evil sorcerer (Justin Theroux). Fabious sets off to free her, but this time with his lazy brother, Prince Thadeous (McBride).

I wasn’t a massive fan of Pineapple Express, however I was willing to give this a chance. I was pleasantly surprised, being in the mood for crude medieval schlock, Green delivers. McBride is extremely funny in his almost childlike performance and he and Franco work extremely well together. The relationship between Thadeous and his servant, Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) also lives up to it’s great comic potential. Franco adds to the fun and shows of his great skills as a comedic actor. We also get to hear the lovely voice of Zooey Deschanel, despite being quite an underused role. Kudos to Justin Theroux, movie villains particularly, those in comedies usually suffer from bad writing and being less funny than their co-stars but Theroux holds his own and is extremely funny with some great lines. This film isn’t for everyone and the humour is rather hit and miss, some scenes like the opening where McBride is about to be hanged by a tribe of dwarves or a scene where the characters visit a child molesting Yoda-inspired character, all fall flat. But cue scenes with minotaur rape, Toby Jones’ mangina, fish finger feasts and Steven the Iguana and things get back on track.

Casting of Natalie Portman doesn’t particularly work either – comedy isn’t her strong suit and the character just comes across as arrogant and unlikeable. Despite losing a little interest towards the end (the film may have benefited from being a solid 90 mins as opposed to the 1h 45) the film does stay largely funny towards the end, with fun performances from most of the cast.