Your S#!tness – a Your Highness review
Released: 2011
Director: David Gordan Green
Writers: Danny McBride, Ben Best
Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman
I like to consider myself to be fairly tolerant and forgiving of films. I have often demonstrated my willingness to sit through a bad movie, to either give it a chance to get better or have fun laughing at its many faults and generally have a good time. There are plenty of movies perfect for the latter, my all time favourite being Robot Monster, but other classics like The Last Dragon, The Core and Tango & Cash also spring to mind. Movies so dumb that you can’t take them seriously and really shouldn’t. Unfortunately, Your Highness is nowhere near as good as any of these films.
What you need to know
Your Highness tells the story of Prince Thadeous (McBride), a foul mouthed, lecherous idiot who lives in the shadow of his older, handsome, more successful brother Prince Fabious (Franco). Fabious returns home from yet another successful quest with a young lady in tow, who he rescued from imprisonment in an evil wizard’s tower and now plans to marry. But the evil wizard appears and re-kidnaps the bride to be, prompting Fabious onto a new quest, with his reluctant brother in tow.
Along the way they are betrayed by their soldiers, and meet opponent/ally Isabel (Portman). After some ‘adventures’ they eventually infiltrate the castle, defeat the wizard, rescue Fabious’ bride and Thadeous proves his worth.
What we thought
DAVID: This movie is so unbelievably bad that I almost gave it a negative score. As I stated in my intro, I don’t mind bad movies. In fact my upcoming Bucks Night will involve a group of my closest friends watching the worst/funniest sci-fi movies we can find (weird, I know). But this film is not only bad in all aspects, acting, direction, effects, and story, it is also offensive.
This is supposed to be a comedy, but I don’t find two men masturbating a Yoda-like creature into submission, child molestation (even if only hinted at), or anal rape by a Minotaur funny.
RICHO: This movie is very much a vanity project for Danny McBride. Not only is he the star of the movie but he’s co-writer and Executive Producer as well. Unfortunately, if this movie is any indication, McBride doesn’t deserve to be the recipient of a vanity project. The failure of this movie to entertain on any level falls squarely on his shoulders. His character is unbearable and his performance insipid. His screenwriting is laughable and his jokes consistently fall flat, or come across as downright embarrassing.
DAVID: I only laughed once (for some reason the ‘Fuck Yeah’ exclaimed upon Thadeous’ return to court got me giggling). One laugh in 100 mins is a terrible ratio.
RICHO: I’m glad you managed to get a laugh out of this pointless piece of celluloid. I admit that I’m not the biggest fan of stoner comedies. They’re just not my type of humour. However, I can usually find at least one or two genuinely funny moments in most of the stoner comedies I’ve watched. Your Highness fails in reaching even the usual low standards of these types of films; there isn’t a single funny scene in the entire movie. Their attempts at gross-out humour certainly manage to be gross, but they didn’t bring even the slightest hint of a smile to my face.
DAVID: I really can’t think of anything good to say for this disaster of a film. Franco was ok as the adventurous Prince and it is always good to see Charles Dance and Natalie Portman on screen but it is not enough to counter McBride’s awful performance or unbelievably unfunny script.
RICHO: It’s interesting to see Dance and Portman sleeping their way through this movie. Portman especially stands out. Coming off a career-defining performance in Black Swan, it’s almost impossible to reconcile the Academy Award-winning actress of that movie with the lacklustre, almost bored sleepwalker we see here. I suppose it doesn’t help that the material she’s given to work with is unbearable.
There are some usually strong actors filling out the cast aside from Dance and Portman, most notably Toby Jones and Zooey Deschanel, but none of them can seem to elevate this movie to anything more than abysmal.
It doesn’t help that McBride is the antagonist and our POV character. He has no redeeming features as a character and comes across as annoying and unlikeable. There’s no reason to want him to succeed and nothing about his personality that is sympathetic or relatable. Even his supposed transformation to a more honourable character at the end of the film seems contrived, and he’s just as unpleasant and disagreeable at the end as he is at the beginning.
DAVID: Avoid this film, 0 Lukes.
RICHO: I could not agree more. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that has absolutely no redeeming features at all. 0 Lukes.
What do you think?
Think we were too harsh on Your Highness? Or have you also seen this piece of rubbish and also wanted to demand your life back? Let us know by leaving a comment below! We would love to read your thoughts.
