“Your Highness” has been plucked straight from the imagination of a 13-year-old boy who just discovered masturbation and violent video games. Or rather, it seems to have been gestating since that age in the minds of the screenwriters, Danny McBride and Ben Best.
It should have stayed there.
The plot at its most basic level seems sane enough: The evil magician, Leezar (Justin Theroux), kidnaps Princess Isabel (Zooey Deschanel), and her fiance, Prince Fabious (James Franco), and his brother, Thadeous (McBride), must rescue her.
Except that Thadeous is a doltish, pot-smoking loser. Except that, to begin the quest, the brothers must perform sexual favors for a tentacled, alien-looking wise man. Except that one of Fabious’ advisers turns out, for no apparent reason, to lack genitalia.
Except that Leezar plans to rape the princess when the two moons converge, creating a dragon offspring he will use to rule the world.
Nothing else in the film makes sense anymore. “Your Highness” is essentially a series of ludicrous set pieces, none of which really matter. They don’t even set up punch lines because the humor, per se, doesn’t come from jokes. It comes from profanity, staggering instances of stupidity and excessively gruesome deaths.
I’m not sure who decided that extreme violence is funny, but they’ve certainly convinced McBride and Best. The director, David Gordon Green, is clearly on board too, taking obvious delight in capturing unnecessarily grotesque images on camera.
Green and McBride worked together on “Pineapple Express” a few years ago, with Green directing and McBride acting. That script was far more coherent, perhaps because it was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, but the over-the-top final fight scene hinted at Green’s artistic future.
McBride, for what it’s worth, fits all too perfectly into his role in “Your Highness.” He’s been one of the most promising actors to emerge from the Judd Apatow comedy gang, but he probably shouldn’t be allowed to run wild with a screenplay again anytime soon.
Franco, meanwhile, wears the same spaced-out smirk he sported while hosting the Academy Awards, even though the script says Fabious is supposed to be a heroic, beloved prince who inspires terrible jealousy in his brother. Not that Franco should be taking himself seriously, but he looks like he’s playing a trick on the audience, like he took the part ironically.
He should be glad he’s not a woman. Deschanel seems completely bewildered by the whole spectacle, casting about wide-eyed glances while enduring a barrage of jokes about her impending sexual assault.
When Natalie Portman appears from nowhere as a vengeful warrior and saves the brothers, her first scene casts false hope, establishing her as the most skilled fighter in the movie. But the story steadily chips away at her character’s dignity, until she finally gives in without warning to Thadeous’, let’s say, charms.
“Your Highness” may be funniest to young teenagers, but they really should be kept far away. The movie treats sex with perverse fascination, as mystical and bizarre as the Minotaur or the five-headed monster.
The script vastly overcompensates for what is clearly an awkward subject, making explicit and inappropriate quips about homosexuality and rape. McBride and Best seem much more comfortable dreaming up outlandish acts of violence, resulting in a very loud movie with very little to say.
After Thadeous slays the Minotaur, he wears the beast’s severed penis as a trophy, and it reappears in scene after scene, hanging limp from his neck. It’s the perfect representation of the film ““ too fond of violence, too fixated on genitalia and no idea what to do with itself.
Email Goodman at agoodman@media.ucla.edu.