It’s especially appropriate to celebrate the fantasy-comedy Your Highness turning 15, because that might be the precise age of the viewers best calibrated to enjoy this critically reviled box-office flop. That wasn’t the demographic director David Gordon Green was serving for most of the 2000s: Instead, he made movies like All the Real Girls and Undertow, which built his reputation as an indie darling with a clear Terrence Malick influence. But in 2008, he took a sudden left turn into action-comedy with Pineapple Express, about a process server (Seth Rogen), his goofy pot dealer (James Franco), and the dealer’s supplier (Danny McBride). The film quickly became his biggest hit. So it felt natural that Green would reteam with Franco and McBride for another silly ’80s genre riff with pot-culture overtones. (Rogen sat out; presumably he was busy with his own boondoggle.)
In spite of the title and a handful of scenes, however, Your Highness doesn’t have all that much to do with weed. The title is the first of several instances where the movie sidesteps expectations in a way that may have frustrated even its target audience, let alone the many critics who threw up their hands in disgust over Green’s second crack at a big studio comedy. Among those instances is how Green positions Your Highness’ humor. It is not exactly an outright spoof of sword-and-sorcery movies. It’s irreverent, but it avoids the full-on goofery you might expect from this core group of filmmakers. It’s more like a genuine work of fantasy that happens to star Danny McBride, who can’t help but bring his own approach to the material.
McBride plays Thadeous, a layabout prince and brother to the more dashing and heroic Fabious (Franco). When the malevolent sorcerer Leezar (Justin Theroux) kidnaps Fabious’ fiancée Princess Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) during their wedding, Fabious and Thadeous set out on a quest to rescue her. Along the way, they face various fantastical obstacles, betrayals, and the beautiful warrior princess Isabel (Natalie Portman).
It’s all standard quest stuff, played straight, for the most part. McBride, affecting an amusingly slight English accent, is the only character mixing semi-elevated fantasy speak with his personal vernacular of profanity, modern colloquialisms, and sentences that sound like a 12-year-old attempting to write himself as a badass.
This makes some of his dialogue inherently parodic, and Your Highness is certainly not a serious movie. But while its fantasy elements are sometimes intentionally puerile — like the “wise wizard,” depicted through puppetry, who demands sexual favors for his knowledge — they’re also genuinely inventive. In one sequence, scantily clad forest women lead the princes to a woodsy arena, where their enemy creates a five-headed dragon by dipping his hand into a bucket of yellow gunk. When Fabious slices one of the creature’s heads, the human in control loses a finger. It feels like a visual idea the filmmakers had been waiting to work into a movie for years. Fabious also has a mechanical bird companion who accompanies them on their quest. It’s an outright spoof of the old Clash of the Titans, but it’s more respectful to the legacy of Bubo the Owl than the 2010 remake of that film.
Similarly, moments that recall other 1980s fantasy films, like Krull or The Dark Crystal, aren’t making fun of them. Instead, it turns their subtextual teenage appeal into the subject of the film. Thadeous is essentially a lazy viewer; he thinks swords, triumphant quests, and warrior babes are cool, but doesn’t know how to interact with any of them, or how to direct his self-interest toward a greater good. Instead of granting a younger character the wish fulfillment of an epic quest, Green gives an extremely adolescent-minded man the opportunity to actually get in on the mythical action around him, rather than enjoying his privilege from the sidelines.
It’s clear that Green and McBride themselves also think the various fantasy trappings are fun and awesome, rather than corny. Your Highness has a cheerfulness that anticipates the comedy-inclusive but non-spoof tone of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which was similarly made by filmmakers who obviously love this stuff. Those high spirits can be sustained even if some of the jokes don’t land perfectly.
The movie does still have some problems — an admission that will strike many as a vast, confusing understatement. Even before Franco was accused of sexual misconduct, he wasn’t ideal for the role of the steadfast, borderline naïve hero type. He brings a little of the sweetness he showed in Pineapple Express, but he’s not funny enough to match McBride, nor convincing enough for the movie’s forays into fantastical adventure. Deschanel, meanwhile, is amusing as the sheltered princess, but not given nearly enough to do with her deadpan talents. (One deleted scene does give her a duet with Franco on a song of yearning vulgarity called “Shitty Moons.” It’s more overtly spoofy than what ended up in the film.)
On the other hand, it’s rare to see Natalie Portman having as much pure fun as she seems to be having here, as the brusque archer Isabel. And Green’s cinematographer Tim Orr helps stretch the movie’s low-ish budget (for a fantasy epic, anyway) with the same verdant textures he brought to Green’s smaller-scale indies, like All the Real Girls and Prince Avalanche. Green himself pressed on and made one more broad, stoner-adjacent comedy — the even-more-reviled The Sitter (I like that one, too!) — before continuing one of the most eclectic careers in modern cinema, working on indies, mainstream dramas, and slasher sequels alike. These disparate projects are united by the feeling that no matter how strange, silly, or confounding, Green is happy to be making them.
Your Highness is currently streaming on Starz and available to rent on Amazon and Google Play.
