‘Your Highness’ review

Director: David Gordon Green

Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Justin Theroux

3/5 popcorns

The great art of improvised comedy, considered extinct from cinema for years, is apparently not lost on everyone. In ‘Your Highness,’ an expectedly riotous comedy from ‘Pineapple Express’ director David Gordon Green, much of the superb dialogue was ad-libbed, with the extremely talented riffing off of a mere outline penned by star Danny McBride.

A stoner comedy blessed with an absurdly great cast, Academy Award winner Natalie Portman, James Franco and the perpetually underrated Justin Theroux lend their talents to the first Hollywood movie in memory that relies on improvisation.

‘Your Highness’ is often clunky,making it difficult to care about the story, but these shortcomings are forgiven considering the highly original and provocative nature of the production. In television shows defined by improvisation, such as the peerless ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ one could say the actors have it too easy in that Larry David’s enormous personality and familiarity with fellow cast members engenders a feeling that is all too natural. It takes real guts to film a $50 million comedy without a script, and it warrants real praise for pulling it off.

The ne’er-do-well son of a medieval king, Thadeous (McBride) whiles the days away smoking pot and messing around with his personal jester, Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker). His brother, Fabious (Franco), is a prototypically dashing, fearless knight who continually enraptures the kingdom with his heroic deeds. Upon completing his most recent quest, he returns with Belladona (Zooey Deschanel), a virgin he has fallen in love with and intends to marry. Before they wed, however, the evil wizard Leezar (Theroux) kidnaps her, forcing the lazy Thadeous to embark on his first quest with his considerably braver brother.

Reteaming three years after the release of ‘Pineapple Express,’ McBride and Franco boast outstanding chemistry as mismatched brothers destined for glory. McBride’s now somewhat iconic spewing of narcissistic and crude epithets, made famous by his character Kenny Powers on the HBO series ‘Eastbound and Down,’ are put to great use as he swears at everybody around him, something unexpected for a film set in medieval times. Franco plays second fiddle to McBride, less crude and more restrained, and Portman does an admirable job in one of her freest roles yet, literally saying whatever she wants in every scene.

Director David Gordon Green is extremelyversatile, hailing from a devout indie background and progressing to make a handful of disturbing dramas and breezy comedies. Like much of his previous work, ‘Your Highness’ is unique and fearless, compensating for a rather uninteresting narrative with a bevy of laughs that somehow never tire. Just like any other Hollywood genre, comedies are becoming less risky and more tame, which makes ‘Your Highness’ all the more refreshing. Even when it stumbles, it is stumbling for a cause.

Despite its consistency inchurning out laughs, the film is noticeably flawed to the point that, occasionally, it teeters on the brink of unacceptability. Relying solely on theimprovised dialogue, the filmis incredibly unrefined and the special effects are downright cartoonish. It is just as easy to mock the film as it is to praise it, but to deride it for such reasons would be simply unfair given the expectations it set for itself. For the most part, it delivered.

‘Your Highness’ is indeed as imperfecta comedy as there is, but it’s also extraordinarily special. Leave it to McBride, who wrote the film’s outline with Ben Best and determined much of the action, to break the mold in his biggest film yet. This is a film made up of insatiable actors who are more than willing to put their reputations on the line, improvising their quest.

smlittma@syr.edu

Published on April 13, 2011 at 12:00 pm