Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Well, that was… tasteless. Somebody somewhere thought it would be a good idea to give Danny McBride free reign to create movie. In the grand scheme of things, say in relation to furthering society as a whole, this probably wasn’t a good idea. But taken at face value, the only question we have for ourselves would be ‘did ‘Your Highness’ make me laugh?’ Yes… yes it did, and it is said that laughter is good for the soul. I didn’t say that, The Bible said that. Of course the guy that wrote that Book probably didn’t see ‘Your Highness’ because if he did there’s a darn good chance he would write and addendum to that quote.

As the story goes Mr. McBride is Prince Thadeous, a never do well medieval slacker who is the very shame of his king father Tallious (Charles Dance). If only he could be more like his older brother, the dashing knight and heir to the throne Prince Fabious (James Franco) who has just returned from yet another glorious quest, Cyclops head in tow, and a brand new virgin bride in the lovely Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) by his side. No, Thadeous would much rather smoke the herb, chase sheep and hang out with his squire Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker).

Then on the day of the wedding between Fabious and Belladonna, the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux) crashes the party, zaps a bunch of folks with magical stuff and steals the bride… or rather steals the bride back because he was saving her for a special world ending event before Fabious took her from him. That sucks for Fabious. What sucks worse is that the King has saddled Fabious with his lazy brother to go on a quest to retrieve the future princess from the clutches of Leezar and his three evil mothers. I would’ve loved for them to explain the science behind the concept of three women giving birth to one man.

It will be a perilous trip for our heroes, one filled with betrayal, dope smoking, pedophiles, bestiality, the eventual appearance of Academy Award Winner Natalie Portman as a warrior princess, and more adventure than you can shake a stick at. Will the irresponsible prince become a man, and help rescue his brother’s maiden before the eclipse occurs and The Fuckening begins? That’s right, I said The Fuckening.

One thing I will never do when discussing these various cinematic masterpieces with you, my friends, is make a brazen statement such as ‘You will not laugh one time!’ which is one of the many, many negative comments I read about David Gordon Green’s movie ‘Your Highness’. How in the hell would I know what makes you laugh? I have a pretty good idea what makes me laugh, since I’m me and all, but you? The absolute nerve.

That being said, I can tell you without fear of recrimination that ‘Your Highness’ made me laugh, and it made me laugh on a consistent basis. It’s tasteless… to a fault… and some of the jokes didn’t work but on our Meter of Funny it was running at over fifty percent which does make it a comedic success by our exacting scientifical standards. For disclosures sake I always mention the movie ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ by comparison which ran around three percent of funny. Not a very funny movie, Cannibal Holocaust. And child molestation jokes… probably better served being left on the cutting room floor. Right next to the World Trade Center jokes, Holocaust jokes, and Japanese Earthquake jokes. I can’t think of single situation which would be a good time to insert a child molestation joke. A Minotaur with a sizable erection humping a guy? Well, that’s not funny either but that’s more of a personal thing in regards to The Funny whereas child molestation jokes, I would think, is generally recognized to be in poor taste.

Now if someone wanted to argue with me that ‘Your Highness’ was artless, relentlessly juvenile, not very intelligent, imaginative or clever… unfortunately I can’t mount much of an argument in defense of this because that person would be pretty damned accurate in their assessment. But if that unknown person was to follow up with ‘… and it’s not funny!’, then we’d have an argument because The Funny is completely subjective. That other stuff is also kind of subjective too, but you would need some solid evidence if someone took the foolish task of defending ‘Your Highness’ as being intelligent, and I didn’t see anything in the running time of this movie that I could remote present to the defense of that, but not The Funny. Subjectively speaking, ‘Your Highness’ was pretty funny. This isn’t to say that I recommend you run out and see this, oh good heavens no, that’s not a responsibility I’m even close to willing to accept. But you asked me if I thought it was funny, and I’m telling you ‘yes it was’. Proceed at your own risk.