There are two kinds of people in this world: those who laugh at Minotaur penis jokes and those who don’t.
For those who count yourself in the latter, ask me not to explain, let alone justify, why we the former find humor in such things. That is like asking someone to explain why people fall in love; that’s right, I just equated Greco-mythological monster genitalia to the feelings you have for your significant other. Your Highness is…exactly what it is. No more, no less. Well, maybe a little less. David Gordon Green and Co. have fashioned themselves an accumulative 1980s fantasy adventure and then skewered it with the crudest, most tasteless and most juvenile sense of humor imaginable.
This film builds nothing in the way of lasting insight, comedic parable or snarky commentary (like the recent and backhandedly obnoxious Paul). It is 100% pure relegation. Surface content aside, it offers nothing except (and here comes the brilliant part) the sweet refuge of nothingness itself; because Your Highness is also 100% pure excursionary – a chance to get away from everything, even one’s own nagging intellectual ego. This film proposes the theory that all the stupid shit we thought was funny at age 13 never really leaves us, but lies dormant, every ready for the second cumming of a $50 million budget fantasy spoof. <~ see what I did just there? Exactly.
As Fabious and his knights, captained by best friend Boremont (Damian Lewis), set out to rescue his bride and destroy Leezar, Thadeous and his waifish servant Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) are forced by the king to join the quest, or else face banishment from the royal family. Fabious and Thadeous first seek the counsel of the Great Wise Wizard who gives them a magic compass that leads to the hidden Sword of the Unicorn, an enchanted weapon that can slay Leezar. Soon after, the brothers uncover a plot of betrayal conspired by Fabious’ own knights, from whom they barely escape with their lives. The road then brings many perils and the brothers eventually but hesitantly join forces with a mysterious warrior woman named Isabel (Natalie Portman), who has an agenda of her own.
Before we go any further I think it best to provide some context that might help many of you understand why I and certain others of my ilk enjoyed this movie. As any average cinephile could guess, Your Highness homages everything from the original Clash of the Titans to Dragonslayer, Krull, The Dark Crystal, Willow and every other ‘80s fantasy production in between. Yet I should also address the behind-closed-doors geekdom that accompanied this era and genre: fantasy role-playing games. I myself am a role-play gamer, or at least I used to be. I was a casual but consistent gamer over the stretch of a decade, often averaging one or two weekends a month, usually a Saturday night, with a small 3 to 4 man group of friends including my older brother. People unfamiliar with such an event might picture a gathering of sheltered, overweight (or conversely scrawny) man-boys hunched over a table of dice and character sheets, each bearing deadly serious concentration as if reciting Othello or defusing a bomb.
I won’t deny the luster with which we performed as our characters and there was indeed some definite geeking-out over stats and critical hits. But, truth be told, Game night was really just a variation of Poker night. We’d all come together after a typical lousy work-week and relax at the dining room table with beer and chips and maybe some leftover pizza. Your average RPG narrative was always intermixed with a steady stream of loose jokes and bullshitting, both on topic and off, because none of us ever took it that seriously. And on some nights when the cheap booze and after-hour silliness got the better of us, so too would our characters and their adventure slide into full blown immaturity, complete with aimless detours and homophobic wisecracks.
The correlation with Your Highness is uncanny. The film has been heavily criticized for supplanting thoughtful, well written humor with lowbrow raunchy gags and anachronistic fowl language – an accurate enough observation, but the verdict is a bit unfair methinks, largely due to misplaced standards. Many have complained to waiting and waiting for the film to make them laugh via clearly defined setups and punch-lines. I don’t understand this mindset. Never wait for a joke. Never wait for something to be officially "funny". Comedy doesn’t always have to be this clockwork mechanism that dispenses increments of consensual humor in equal measure. Moreover, not every joke has to be the funniest joke you’ve ever heard in your entire life. The trick to watching a movie like Your Highness is far simpler: just give in to the stupidity.
This movie only has one real joke which is the initial conceit, the singular unified lampooning of all things fantasy quests and sword & sorcery; all the sex pranks and crude language that follow are not so much the point or even the details, but rather the symphonic process, the holistic effect, the sum that is greater than its parts, but not a sum that aspires to any notable greatness on its own, because the lack of ambition is kinda’ the film’s central charm to begin with. Not every movie playing at your local theater must deal high concepts within high concepts. Some of those darkened auditoriums are just places to kick back and crack a smile at half-assed heroes acting a fool. If some of it happens to strike you as being hilarious, great. If not, who cares? Of course, all I’ve really accomplished here is a roundabout reiteration of my opening claim.
The Danny McBride shtick works for me. I get this guy; this mullet haired, ineffectual smartass who spear-tips the film’s anachronisms. Tactless rural white Americans make great idiots, especially when thrown smack-dab into the middle of a figurative China shop. McBride’s Thadeous further echoes my aforementioned RPG nights analogy in that I too was the younger brother who, while in character, would often usurp the adventure, a specific conversation or round of action with some bawdy gesture or lewd remark [i.e.,"I’m just gonna pull out my dick and see what happens."] and I can’t help but laugh at the very fact that such a dire magical quest has been rested primarily on the shoulders of this pickup-truckin’ scallywag persona. An obvious gimmick, but I like it.
James Franco continues from Pineapple Express his huggable sweet nature, but this time as the hopelessly romantic overachiever. Fabious is the ever loving, never judging older brother who has been rendered borderline retarded by his extreme sense of knightly chivalry, in a way that makes Franco more than just the straight man to McBride’s funny man. The two end up foiling each other equally in that respect; Thadeous, the inept buffoon to Fabious’ princely heroism; Fabious, the naïve dork to the many uncharacteristics of the fanciful world including Thadeous’ partying lifestyles. When the former starts freaking out on wizard weed, the latter calmly checks him: "You making a fool of yourself. Handle your shit, Fabious, please."
Justine Theroux plays Leezar as a sexually awkward mama’s boy and chews a bit of scenery with a mock English accent. Much of his screen time is shared with Zooey Deschanel, who, unfortunately, is given the least amount to do save heaving her bosom and playing up reactions to her captor’s bizarre come-ons. Supporting cast members Damian Lewis and Toby Jones as the sniveling spy Julie take a break from their usual dramatic work for a chance to ham around on the sidelines while Rasmus Hardiker goes almost thanklessly as the dainty choir boy sidekick to pig headed Thadeous.
Natalie Portman is the film’s real straight man. This might be the first completely derogative role in the Oscar winner’s 17 year career, and there’s something admittedly refreshing about that. I doubt there was any substantial creative or emotional investment in the part of Isabel, yet Portman keeps it pro and delivers quack-comedy lines like "burning beaver" and "to stop people from fucking to make dragons" with deadly perfect composure. She also looks good, older now for the first time, like a real woman instead of the baby girlish demeanor that followed her well into her 20s. And, yeah, I dig the thong scene.
Regardless of the spoofing, Your Highness dishes a number of delightful fantasy tropes where one set piece after another has been lovingly articulated with topnotch art direction and giddy-like special effects, and where much of it was shot amidst the rocky forested countryside of Northern Ireland. David Gordon Green, his writers Danny McBride and Ben Best, and their extensive FX team prove themselves to be quite inventive – the examples run amok: at one point our heroes are lured by naked, powdered sugared nymphs and trapped in a Thunderdome style arena where the evil overlord Marteetee, a sort of maniacal diapered baby Huey, pits them against a giant hand shaped, five headed hydra that he summons and controls with his own hand by plunging it into a pot of yoke. The Great Wise (and pedo) Wizard is a classic Jim Henson puppet but with an added CG effect that makes his translucent brain sparkle with pinks and golds. Both Leezar and his clone witch mothers can cast upon their enemies proton pack particle beams.
When one steps back and not only looks at the film but considers its very existence, I think a certain admiration is warranted. They made this thing. They actually made it! Pitched, greenlit, funded, filmed and released in theaters nationwide, worldwide! Did I mention this movie has a Minotaur sporting a giant hard-on? Look, just about every week Hollywood takes up our multiplexes with expensive shitty movies that bear all the traits of prepackaged safeness and repetition. And they do so at the expense of riskier projects, not to mention intelligent filmgoers. And while Your Highness is by no means some rare achievement in cinematic art that challenges the status quo, what I like about the film is that it feels like an unsupervised act of delinquency during its making that somehow slipped under the radar of studio bigwigs, who under normal circumstances would just assume keep locked away like a white bread family does their fourth uncouth, pot-smoking child. It’s like a great big dirty prank at Hollywood’s expense; literally, a movie made with big money but made by a team of outside pranksters – a team of indie-cred filmmaking hooligans who infiltrated a studio board meeting and placed whoopee cushions underneath every chair.
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