Your Highness

David Gordon Green is an indie director with an impressively diverse C.V. who surprised everyone when he turned his hand to the stoner comedy with Pineapple Express in 2008. Even more surprising it was, even for the unstoned, quite amusing. No amount of recreational drugs, however, could save this abysmally unfunny spoof of the medieval fantasy movie. Don’t be fooled by the cast list which includes James Franco (who had starred in Pineapple Express) Natalie Portman, Toby Jones and Charles Dance, none of whom are able to save it from the yawning chasm of dismalness

Written and starring Danny McBride (who also executive  produced, which I assume means ‘lost his shirt on’) Your Highness is so inanely juvenile as to beg the question of how (and why) it ever got made. Not only is the programmatically off-colour script totally devoid of wit, but McBride, who had a support role in Pineapple Express has failed to recognize that he is not in anyone’s wildest dreams, lead material. Franco is but so lame is he here that he's not even a good support to McBride as he strains with his doltish character. 

Adding to the head-scratching questions is the fact that Your Highness is not a cheap knock-off (oh. that it had been!)  Considerable money has clearly been spent in both pre-and post-production in order to create a fully-fledged medieval fantasy setting (filmed by Green’s regular director of photography, Tim Orr).  No-one needed to have bothered as hardly anyone but MeBride and his presumably drug-addled friends will ever see this monumental dud.

 

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