Star power and whoever is in the director’s seat are usually good indication of whether or not a film is going to be good or not. When I first watched this trailer, I saw James Franco, Natalie Portman, and Danny McBride. When I saw the guy who directed Pineapple Express was directing this, I was even more excited. Then Rotten Tomatoes came out with it’s consensus and I was deeply saddened by its poor review. [I only use rottentomatoes to tell me which movies I should spend money at a theater, not to judge whether or not a movie is good or not, see my in-depth analysis of rottentomatoes here] If a movie does poor on rottentomatoes, I’ll usually wait till DVD to watch it. And so that is the story of how I wasted two hours of my life watching this pooty patooty of a movie.
What I immediately thought of when I finished this movie (and subsequently tweeted) was ‘Your Highness squanders its talented cast on lame jokes and phoned in acting’. And that’s the general consensus of this movie. It was ambitious to try and make a stoner comedy in medieval times and might’ve been too much for director David Gordon Green. A lot of the period dialogue seemed forced and awkward and despite the actor’s talents, could not be delivered to be believable or funny for that matter. James Franco seemed the most game out of the entire cast, but even he couldn’t salvage the poor writing. Danny McBride plays an annoying lethargic stoner, and Natalie Portman brings nothing besides 4 seconds of a finely toned ass still present from training for Black Swan. The trailer shows another character with promising comedic value, Justin Theroux who plays the films villain Leezar, but even he’s squandered to a forgettable villain who holds a very one dimensional joke.
I thought you could've saved the movie...but I was wrong.
The plot is just as forgettable and lame as the jokes. A quest to find a magical sword to defeat the evil wizard before he takes the virginity of a fair maiden. The quest itself is lame and unengaging and a suitable climax is nowhere to be found to make the film interesting. The action sequences are nothing special. The acting is nothing special. This entire movie is nothing special. The plot tries to bring in absurd and funny supporting characters, but these are often shrugged off at the short screen time they have and the forgettable jokes they execute. I’ve used the word forgettable a lot in this review, because that is what this movie is: forgettable. It had such promise too. Maybe Franco was tired from filming 127 Hours and Portman tired from Black Swan or maybe McBride was filming this between Eastbound and Down, but nothing can forgive this messy film.
This review is short simply because I’ve said everything I needed to. To say anything else would be redundant and I already feel as though I’ve already been redundant enough.
0.5/4 Stars [for the 4 seconds of Portman’s finely toned buttocks]
Here's your half star right here.
Discuss with the Community!