It’s rare to find a movie so bad that it actually offends all five of your senses with flawless precision. Recently, though, one of these rare, terrible, wonders has surfaced. This gem of a movie is Your Highness, starring James Franco, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, Danny McBride, and Natalie Portman.
Let’s back up. This dreadful excuse for a movie begins with a good half hour of character development. It is explained that Prince Fabious (Franco) and his brother Prince Thadeous (Danny McBride) are constantly competing for their father’s love. Because, obviously, nobody loved each other unconditionally in the medieval ages in the world of crappy movies.
One day, Prince Fabious returns from a quest accompanied by a beautiful woman named Belladonna (Deschanel). Here’s some Italian for those who didn’t catch that: ‘bella donna’ means ‘beautiful woman’. That’s how little thought was put in to this movie. Fabious decides he is going to marry Belladonna. And that’s all that is said about it.
At the wedding, a wizard attacks. I put it so simply, because it really was that cut and dry. It was pretty much, “I now pronounce you – WHOA IT’S A WIZARD!” The wizard takes the princess and disappears. So, Fabious and Thadeous go out on a quest to save the princess from the wizard. Because that plot line hasn’t been used before right?
Somehow, they find out EXACTLY where the wizard is keeping Belladonna. This is never explained. They head off in that direction, but are told that they need some special sword to kill him, and are given a funky compass to find the sword. This isn’t a joke. This is actually how this movie plays out. During their travels, they run into a woman named Isabel (Natalie Portman) who is also on a quest to find the wizard. Want to know why she’s on the way to see the wizard? Good, because the movie spends ten painful minutes explaining it. To sum it up, he killed her family.
After around 50 shameless pick-up lines and even more shameless double entendres, they decide to work together to take down the evil wizard. Somewhere around this point, it is revealed that the wizard is going to use planet alignment, green candles, lightning, and an incapacitated Belladonna to make a dragon. Seriously. At some point that night, James Franco is kidnapped by the wizard’s henchmen. Don’t ask why he was kidnapped. It is never explained, and in retrospect, seems counter-productive on the wizard’s part. But then again, who has time for logic when writing a terrible movie?
Anyways, the funky compass eventually leads them to a labyrinth that holds the special magic sword and the Minotaur. After running around the maze for a good five minutes, they each, in a Scooby Doo-esque moment of child-like confusion, finally realize that they are not with each other. Thadeous finds the sword, and Isabel finds the Minotaur. Isabel runs around the maze desperately in order to escape from the Minotaur, and for some reason neglects to use any of the arrows she has. This chase goes on for a good three or four minutes until Thadeous appears and kills the Minotaur.
They leave the labyrinth, and head for the tower. The next 20 minutes or so of the movie are spent revealing EVEN MORE detail into why Isabel wants to kill the wizard. As if, “He killed my family” wasn’t enough of a reason to want to kill him? They reach the tower, and there is a long drawn out battle scene in which they fight the wizard and his minions up a spiral staircase, shouting clichéd things like, “I’ll get you!” and “You’ll never get away with this!” They eventually kill the wizard, and rescue Belladonna, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Except for the poor saps that paid money to see this movie. Watching this movie was like getting donkey-kicked in the funny bone repeatedly while listening to, “I Whip My Hair Back and Forth” and getting soap poured in both eyes. The redundancy of the plot was matched only by the immaturity of the jokes, of which were both pushed aside by how little the directors evidently spent on the set and special effects. This movie receives one star out of four. The only reason it receives even one star is because it only has one star. Natalie Portman. But after starring in this movie, she probably won’t be a star anymore.
