David Gordon Green's crude, silly and dirty medieval fantasy adventure spoof 'Your Highness' is hilarious and even charming. I'm not a big fan of the overuse of toilet humour that has polluted most Hollywood films today but here it works. The good mix of adult (pretty modern-day) humour and the medieval look and language (I use this word loosely) is itself something difficult to achieve. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the movie has heart. 'Your Highness' pays tribute to many of those old action adventure fantasy films that we have grown up watching like 'Conan The Barbarian', 'The Dark Crystal', 'Lady Hawk' etc. The costumes and sets are pretty cool and the special effects and robotics are brilliant. The humour does appear forced at times but the funny characters keep it going.
The actors doe a fine job with their obviously fake British accent (with the exception of Charles Dance and a few others). Danny McBride (who also co-wrote), James Franco and Justin Theroux are very good. This is perhaps Natalie Portman's funniest role to date and she does a decent job. Her role was also supposed to be sexy but that's something difficult to do when you're in a movie that has Zooey Deschanel. Deschanel shows a good dose of cleavage and here she is cast as the damsel in distress (something different for her). She doesn't have much screen time but manages to make the viewer stare at her and chuckle.
On the flip side, the pacing is uneven and there were some scenes could have easily been funnier. Anyway, the movie doesn't take itself seriously and its certainly not a bad suggestion for a Friday night or an indoor flick for a rainy day.
