YOUR HIGHNESS

Written by Danny McBride and Ben Best

Directed by David Gordon Green

Starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux

and Natalie Portman

Isabel: It is my legacy to do anything to stop those who fuck to make dragons.

I don’t know about you but if I am going to get high, it’s because I want to laugh and have a good time. Apparently, when Danny McBride wants to get high, he would rather be painfully unfunny instead, and then drag all of the good people who spent their hard-earned pot money on a ticket to his new movie, YOUR HIGHNESS, down with him into his own personal hell of a bad trip. Not since Harold and Kumar got their dumb asses stuck in a certain detention facility have I had such a sobering experience at a stoner movie.

I spent most of YOUR HIGHNESS with my mouth wide open in stupefied awe of what I was watching. Wait. Was that a mechanical bird I just saw in this medieval setting? Hold on a second. Is James Franco masturbating that strangely unconvincing, Yoda-like alien creature? Uh, is that a minotaur’s penis I see and is it erect? Between all this nonsense and the broken “Ye Olde English” mixed with random cuss word diaglogue, I had no idea what was going on most of the time. And I was sober! Imagine the poor folks who actually prepared ahead of time to see this movie the way it was intended to be seen. In their impaired state, how could they possibly make sense of this insanity? And if you thought James Franco was bad at the Oscars, wait until you hear him sing.

Somewhere behind all the smoke, there is something resembling a plot in YOUR HIGHNESS. Whiny younger prince, Thadeus (McBride), lives in the shadow of older brother, Fabius (Franco). Together, they embark on a quest to stop some wizard type (Justin Theroux) from impregnating Fabius’s new virginal love (Zooey Deschanel) with a dragon baby. That’s right; I said dragon baby. Natalie Portman shows up half way through to kick some random monsters but doesn’t serve much other purpose. (She probably only did 5% of the ass-kicking anyway.) Aside from that though, it is pretty much one completely pointless scene after another, featuring a talented cast making complete boobs of themselves. (Seriously – Toby Jones: Why would you sign on to make yourself look this bad?)

Speaking of boobs, I imagine that McBride and his writing partner, Ben Best, basically inhaled as much ganja as they could before whipping out their penises, dipping them in ink, and sitting down to write YOUR HIGHNESS with them. How else could they possibly explain the total lack of reality in this film (even by fantasy standards) and the disturbing and obsessive manner in which every joke seems to lead back to McBride’s crotch? (Ladies, you have been warned – this movie is especially not for you.) YOUR HIGHNESS might have seemed like a hilarious idea high in McBride’s basement, maybe even genius by their altered standards, but on screen, the buzz is long gone before the credits are even done.

Oh, and David Gordon Green might want to try some actual direction next time.