Comedy
R. 1 hour 42 minutes. At area theaters.
The 40th time you hear the f-bomb in a medieval setting isn’t nearly as funny as the fourth or fifth.
That’s the shortcoming of the central conceit of “Your Highness,” a raunchy stoner comedy in tights from Team “Pineapple Express.”
A Danny McBride vehicle directed and photographed by his pals from film school (University of North Carolina School of the Arts), it’s a sporadically funny farce that plops McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel in a world of dungeons, dragons and bongs.
Franco plays the dashing, quest- happy heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Mourn. McBride is his cowardly, resentful and potty-mouthed younger brother. When Fabious (Franco) returns from a quest with a fiancee, Bella Donna (a dopey Deschanel), Thadeous (McBride) can’t even be bothered to show up at the nuptials. And he’s best man.
But that wedding is where Bella Donna is kidnapped by the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux). Thus, Fabious has his quest. And this time, Dad (Charles Dance) insists Thadeous tag along. An archer on her own quest (Natalie Portman) soon joins their not-very-merry band.
David Gordon Green’s (“Pineapple Express”) action beats are perfectly serviceable. The effects are generic and just a tad cheesy (lightning bolts from the fingers, etc.).
Naturally there’s a hookah, a chastity-belt thong and the comic jolt of Oscar-winner Portman talking tougher and dirtier than even the boys. At least Franco looks more at home here than he did on Oscar night.
There are enough laughs to get by on and one can excuse the dead stretches. What’s less forgivable is the cynicism — the sense that a lot of people wanting another lowbrow hit went out to get ’em one.
