UrbanRhetoric

UrbanRhetoric

4.10.2011

Your Highness [movie ]....by IMTHATDUDE

YOUR HIGHNESS

Save your bread people. Please. I’ll say it plainly. Do not pay to see this movie.If you MUST see it, find it online. Find a “hook up” on Fulton street. Trick someone else into paying for it. You’d be better off sprinkling salt on your hard earned cash and literally eating it – or, depending on your proclivities, smoking it – a movie ticket these days is about as much as a pack of cigarettes or that other stuff, no?

Written by Danny McBride and Ben Best, Your Highness stars McBride (Eastbound and Down, The Foot Fist Way) and directed by David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express - which I hated - and All the Real Girls), Your Highness boasts some of Hollywood’s brightest talents. Yet, two exceptional actors cannot make this crapfest less crappy. In fact, both Natalie Portman and my girl Zooey Deschanel (500 Days of Summer) did like the Knicks do (with Melo and Stoudemire) against the Lebronless Cavs – they played down to the level of their competition. Sorry. Still love you both, but… eh. This was far from good work. Also lending their time to this weird almost amusing feature are an inexplicably effeminate James Franco (you kind of can’t miss this guy these days, he’s everywhere), Justin Theroux (Mullholland Drive, American Psycho), Damian Lewis (Dreamcatcher and NBC’s short-lived, Life) as Booremont, Charles Dance (Gosford Park, Scoop), and Rasmus Hardiker (I Want Candy) as Courtney, the sidekick/squire/jester and a Farscape looking perverted puppet.

IF YOU MUST KNOW:

You might not have heard me when I said don’t waste your doe. But since you did me the courtesy of continuing to read this review… It’s the story of the herb smoking prince philandering slovenly screw-up prince Thaddeus (McBride) who is on the verge of being banished unless he steps up his princely game and starts to elevate himself from the shadow of his older brother Fabious (Franco). Fabious, of course, is well-loved by King Tallious (Dance) and the entire kingdom. So Fabious post-vanquishing one of the kingdom’s foes has returned home and brought back a virgin wife, Belladonna (Deschanel). Belladonna is swiftly kidnapped by the villain warlock Leezar (Theroux) and Thaddeus must join Fabious on the quest to save Belladonna. On the quest they meet with a variety of obstacles and cross paths with the lovely and deadly Isabel. Blah, blah, blah. A ton of crude jokes – which, I ordinarily love, but could barely muster a laugh at in this movie – and some random topless clan of women later, I found myself checking my watch and wondering when it would all be over. In my best Danny Glover voice, maybe “I’m getting too old for this sh!t.” Well, not really. But, I’m definitely too smart for it and, since you’re reading this, you are too.

The most interesting thing about this movie is the thought that either Zooey or Natalie (or both) might have some silly love scene or MIGHT flash a bit of breastage. Please be advised - THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN. Nor should anyone with half a brain have expected either of them to be so foolish as to have such a scene in this kind of movie. However, as one of the stoners in the theater quipped about Portman to his fellow stoner “dude, I didn’t think she’d do a nude scene, but I heard there was nudity and Natalie Portman already got her Oscar, so…I mean all those breasts and she couldn’t even show us a nip or something.” I, literally, laughed out loud. While Natalie has continued the tradition of following an Oscar winning performance with an awful movie choice (See Halle Berry, Charlize Theron, and whatever dumb ass film Monique will do post-Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire), she’s no dummy – so, negative on the Portman breastage. Stoner #1 did have a point in his own weirdly logical way. At least it was funny to hear her say something about her “burning beaver.” Stoner #2 posed an interesting reply

(completely unrelated to the immediately preceding comment by his friend, Stoner #1), “Bro, why didn’t this movie come out on 4-20?” THAT is a great question. And with that, finding myself confounded by the interrogative of a random moviegoer who smelled heavy of the purple/kush or whatever those kids are smoking these days, I think I will conclude this review here. Even high, this movie wouldn’t be funny. Of that, I am pretty damned sure.

That Dude gives Your Highness: 2

RATING SYSTEM:

1. They make crap this pure?
2. Couldn’t be more under-whelmed.
3. Not too shabby, I won’t ask for my money back.
4. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good./Worth the 12 bucks.
5. Why are you reading this and not seeing this movie? Jackass.

1 comment:

Thanks for leaving a comment for UrbanRhetoric. We really appreciate the feedback, questions, ideas + love. Holler