Mike Pankonien
Staff Writer

The Hangover, Pineapple Express and Lord of the Rings all rolled in to one: that is really the only way I can sum up Your Highness. The film tells the story of the heroic Prince Fabious (James Franco) and his quest to rescue his bride-to-be (Zooey Deschanel). Fabious is accompanied on the journey by his lazy, useless brother Thadeous (Daniel McBride).

This film is a comedy first and foremost, with McBride and his sidekick Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) stealing the show. With this in mind, it is only so good. Plenty of scenes induce a combination of laughs and awkward-silence type chuckles. But nothing ever made me crack up uncontrollably with laughter; everything is held too much in context with the film and its time, it all feels too serious.

The closest Your Highness comes to inducing the kind of comedic success it is looking for (i.e. Pineapple Express) is through slapstick comedy and sexual innuendos – two things that can only get you so far in a comedy.

But what really put me off about the film is the production values: they are honestly too good for the movie. The film seems to be going for an epic, Tolkien, middle ages-feel. While there is nothing wrong with this (and the production did credit to the film), it does not fit with a comedy from the like of McBride and the film’s director, David Green. It is as if the film is hoping to be a comedic success but if that does not work, it would go for the epic movie approach; the two styles just end up conflicting and the viewer is left confused.

The individual performances are satisfactory; as I said earlier, McBride and Hardiker steal the show with all the best lines. If anything, they are the only comedic, flippant personalities in the film. But even that gets degraded whenever McBride finds the dour, heroic side of his character.

Franco’s performance with Fabious was is dead-on heroic. With this I am disappointed; I kept waiting for some real humor to come from Franco’s character; in the end, Fabious remains naïve and pure to the ultimate loss of the audience (which is especially disappointing since Franco and Green had previously worked together on Pineapple Express).

Natalie Portman (who plays the mysterious warrior women Isabel, who joins the main characters in their travels) also left me severely disappointed; her acting was adequate, but that is it. Mind you, there is not a whole lot she can do with the part (tomboy warrior), but coming from the actress who had just been awarded Best Actress at the Oscars this year, I expected better.

Like Portman’s performance, overall the film is adequate. That is the problem; I was really hoping for more from this film. It has the perfect combination of actors and the director responsible for one of the best stoner comedies of all time, Pineapple Express. Even then, it is not terrible; but it could have been so much more.

Overall, the combination of too few actual jokes and the pseudo-Tolkien direction they decided to take with the film robbed any chance it had has at matching its anticipated success.

Rating: Eh… (C+)