Note: The Hollywood Reporter is usually my favorite trade publication.
Your Highness isn’t a great movie. It’s not even very good. But it’s fun, has moments, and certainly isn’t an abomination. The Hollywood Reporter just ran their review, and it is an abomination. Kirk Honeycutt seems to have some vendetta in his review and it mystifies me. He gives away a major sight gag from the third act, calls David Gordon Green “tone-deaf to comedy” without mentioning his phenomenal successes with Pineapple Express and episodes of Eastbound & Down, mistakenly accuses James Franco and Zooey Deschanel of sleepwalking through their roles, and when discussing Natalie Portman mistakenly focuses mostly on the work of what is obviously her stunt double.
How does someone call David Gordon green tone deaf to comedy?
How does a professional reviewer miss the mark so much? How does he not mention Justin Theroux’s stuff, some of my favorite parts of the movie? How does he not realize what Green/McBride/Franco/Ben Best’s unified “brand” is like? This movie certainly fits their mold, though is a more polished, effects heavy and less smart and layered comedy than the classic Pineapple Express.
This movie is going to fail. It’s impossible for it not to. It looks expensive, isn’t a resounding creative success, and comes out at a time where the genre it’s using/spoofing/goofing on isn’t as big as it was four years ago.
But it’s a movie with some great moments and certainly not the affront Honeycutt makes it out to be.
It just feels wrong. Like there’s some ulterior motive I missed. Or, maybe that particular reviewer can’t rest easy if a movie doesn’t live up to his [not the filmmakers’ for sure] notion of Your Highness being comparable to the best work of Monty Python and Mel Brooks’ careers.
Boo.
3 comments
I’m guessing reviews for this will start popping up tomorrow?
“the only excuse for the film’s existence is a misguided act of friendship in the case of Green and McBride and for everyone else a paycheck”
This film exists because McBride and company love the films that they are sending up [i.e. Krull, Ladyhawk, Dragonslayer, Sorcerer] while adding some edge and profanity to the genre in a natural and refreshing way that elevates YOUR HIGHNESS above being just a spoof movie. PINEAPPLE EXPRESS wasn’t just the best stoner comedy in decades [and as a legally reformed stoner, I find the film more funny now than I ever did baked] it was also a clever buddy/action film that had real world consiquences for the character’s stupidity. But that script was Rogan and Goldberg’s, this time we are getting McBride and Best unfiltered on a grand scale with a director they have a great history with and trust to take their humor to the next level visually.
YOUR HIGHNESS is not a masterpiece of comedy, but it is insanely fucking funny. As R-Rated comedies go this year, this will be tough for audiences and will piss off and offend a lot of people for all the right reasons. Unlike PAUL, which pissed off people for being fooled into thinking it was a light comedy with an alien that they’re kids wanted to see along with a clever amount of creationist bashing, this film makes no bones about what it is and where it is going. For those that get it great, for the rest of you… enjoy THE HANGOVER PART II.
I watched this with a couple of co-workers at my theater last night, and I enjoyed it quite a lot, but I can see how someone could miss the boat on the tone of it, particularly younger audiences or people that were never into the mostly not-very-good sword and sorcery flicks of the 80’s that inspired it. If they can buy the mechanical bird (which TOTALLY belongs) and the awkward singing in the first 10 minutes of the movie, they should be able to see that the movie only SEEMS dumber than it actually is. Minus the intentional comedy, it would probably still be a better than average 80’s fantasy film, which were often masterpieces of unintentional comedy in their own right.
That reminds me, when I was a kid that just ate this stuff up when I’d see it at the local video store, there was one box for a movie where the blurb on the back seriously ran down the entire story of the film, including the twists and stuff, and I wish I could remember what movie it was. I know it was the early days of home video, and they didn’t quite have all the kinks worked out when it came to the packaging (anyone remember when some of them would just have some random still from the movie on the cover?), but there was seriously a fucking essay on the back off this thing. “And then finally he returns home to the kingdom, where he must fight a giant dragon, and when all is seemingly lost, he remembers a conversation from 20 minutes ago where his brother told him that dragons don’t like being stabbed in the eyes, so he stabs the dragon in the eyes, and it dies, but then he ends up having to fight the evil wizard that seemingly died towards the beginning of the film…”. Again, can’t remember what movie that case went to, but I want to say that maybe there was a Carradine in it…
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