James Franco has followed up with his Academy Award-nominated performance in “127 Hours” with yet another role in a stoner movie, director David Gordon Green’s latest film, “Your Highness.”
Thankfully, Franco’s latest movie doesn’t last as long as when he was stuck in a mountain.
Unfortunately for Franco, his poor performance in this films falls victim to the poor writing by fellow lead actor Danny McBride and Ben Best.
“Your Highness” attempts to serve as a parody for medieval themes, but it ends up being the joke itself.
Franco plays Prince Fabious, who is fresh from saving imprisoned woman Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) from an evil cyclops.
If there’s one thing that you’ll find annoying in this film (and, believe me, there will be a lot of them), it’s that the characters mention the word “quest” excessively.
It seems like the writers became obsessed with the word to the point that they continually just want to shove it down the audience’s throats similar to how the f-bomb was used in “Goodfellas.”
Just as Fabious is about to marry Belladonna, an evil wizard (Justin Theroux) interrupts the wedding and steals her and takes her back to his castle. As you might expect, Fabious is sent out on yet another quest to retrieve her and defeat the wizard – only this time, Fabious’ brother Thadeous (McBride), is ordered to go with him by their father, King Tallious (Charles Dance)
The quest is Thadeous’ first, and he is at first unwilling, but in order to make a bad movie even worse, he follows the orders of his father.
From there, he and his brother Fabious, along with a group of knights, set out on a absurd adventure spewing even more ridiculous dialogue.
Of course, many might see this film because of the young attractive actress, Natalie Portman, who plays the common badass girl we’ve been so accustomed in seeing in these types of comedy-adventure films.
However, she, too, suffers from weak writing.
Her reputation as an Academy Award-winning actress for her brilliant performance in “Black Swan” is now slowly eroding with her roles in two big screen duds this year.
Another thing that’s laughable with this film is the special effects and costume design.
There’s one scene in the film where McBride and Portman face off with a minotaur – only the minotaur looks nothing like the minotaurs you’re used to seeing in other medieval films.
It seriously looks like the producers (that is, if there even were any) photoshopped a head of a cow and pasted it on the body of a man.
Overall, this is certainly not a movie you want to see in theaters.
If you’re that interested in watching these so-called “stoner” movies, then wait until they come out on Redbox, because they aren’t worthy of your money.
