I was hoping that seeing Your Highness would present me with the perfect opportunity to write a really scathing review filled with ranting, exaggeration and maybe a bit of swearing, but I can’t. Your Highness isn’t that bad.
Despite the easy comparison Your Highness isn’t trying to be The Princess Bride, it isn’t even trying to parody classic fantasy quest-based films, all it is trying to do is be a broad comedy set in medieval times with plenty of jokes about sex, drugs and people swearing with bad British accents in the middle of speaking with an old English dialect. In trying to be this very specific type of comedy, Your Highness succeeds.
The film may not have been laugh a minute but it was amusing at times, and Danny McBride was offering up nothing different, for better or worse, to what viewers of Eastbound and Down expect from him week on week. The combined talents of Franco, Deschanel and Portman made the film easily watchable, even when director David Gordon Green wasn’t really trying.
A highlight was Rasmus Hardinker as McBride’s sidekick for offering up silly faces and dry wit in equal measure, and to the set designer who hadn’t been told this was just a comedy and the sets didn’t need to rival (and possible beat) Game of Thrones. It was also nice to see Damian Lewis in a larger role than I had expected.
Your Highness is a lot of fun and as a raunchy comedy works quite well. Not all of the jokes stem from sex or drugs and there is some intelligence if you listen hard enough. The only way the film really lets you down is if you are a fan of David Gordon Green’s early work, the beautiful and painfully indie All the Real Girls seems like the work of a much more mature and talented director.
If Your Highness doesn’t seem like your sort of film then it probably isn’t, but for me it fit right into the category of guilty pleasure and I am rightfully ashamed of that fact.
Mild Concern 