Your Highness (**)

Directed by: David Gordon Green

Starring: Danny McBride, James France, Natalie Portman, Rasmus Hardiker, Justin Theroux, Zooey Deschanel, Damian Lewis

Seen: May 13th 2011

** Out of ****

Your Highness falls in one of the rarest genres you'll ever see, a fantasy comedy adventure. What is even more surprising is that the movie is actually rather well produced, the sets look good, the special effects are somewhat impressive, and the creatures look real. What's disappointing however is the fact that the movie is filled with pervasive bad language and juvenile humour to excess.

Thadeous (McBride) and Fabious (Franco) are brother princes in the kingdom of King Tallious. Fabious is the brave and conquering one, dashingly going out on quests which he skilfully navigates. Thadeous is lazy and spoiled and very unskilled in combat. He is the slacker of the kingdom, getting in trouble more often than not, and the movie starts with his failed hanging by the dwarves for having slept with their king's daughter, after which the title sequence is a pretty impressive (but already overcome with juvenile input) animated depiction of his escape from the dwarves. Thadeous arrives back home after having rescued his virgin girlfriend Belladonna (Deschanel) from the evil wizard Leezar (Theroux), but as soon as they attempt to get married, Leezar shows up and kidnaps Belladonna again; he plans to sleep with her (rape her) when their world's two moons converge, which will impregnate her with a dragon with which he can take over the kingdom.

Fabious, gladly, and Thadeous, begrudgingly, goes on the quest to save Belladonna, and on the way they meet up with some strange and colourful characters: The Great Wise Wizard (little more than an old pervert); the nymphs and their leader Marteetee, a fat, ugly, almost naked man surrounded by topless girls covered in mud; a Minotaur with an unwelcome sex drive; and the brave Isabel (Portman), also on a quest leading her to Leezar. Their quest requires them to retrieve the Sword of Unicorn to slay Leezar, and they blunder and tumble through it on their way to Leezar's lair.

The comedy was failure after failure with no more than maybe 5 mildly amusing moments. I suspect the couple behind me, laughing from the first time the word "shit" surfaced, were laughing more because they were expecting a comedy than they were laughing at actual funny. Or maybe they were just deliriously drunk when seeing the movie, because I didn't find anything laugh-out-loud funny, not for a second - everything seemed funnier in the trailers. The best bits are when modern language make it into the movie - a character replying to a compliment with "Nice!", or some such weird oddity. While it is relatively well produced, I can't justify more than two stars out of four for this shocking movie, as it flies through all convention of taste and maturity and just continues to a point where you are presented with nothing more than an incomprehensible pile of dung.