Review of Your Highness (2011) by Lasse C — 07 Jan 2012

Pretty solid comedy filled with over the top humor. The best way to watch this one is to just open up and laugh at what they've created. Another thing that would be great is to have the world's worst pig-squeel laugher who you absolutely hate sit right behind you.

Really, if you think about it, it's crazy what they were allowed to do with the movie. Who would put $60 million into a classic fairy tale filled with f-bombs, dick jokes, nudity, ridiculous creatures, and whatever else David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and Ben Best could come up with? The film opens up letting the audience know they are going to be ridiculous.

Thadeous is stuck in a group of dwarfs (aka fairytale midgets) who want to hang him for sleeping with one of the women of the town. He has the rope around his neck and he's about to die. The twist of this part is what makes it such a great opener to Your Highness.

The opening credits are great too, keeping the fairytale idea by flipping through a book with drawings. Everything is taken to an adult level though. It reminded me of watching a mature version of The Princess Bride.

During the Q&A, DGG was saying he and Danny McBride were both huge fans of The Princess Bride and they went back and watched many other fantasy films. In fact, the studio was nervous about giving DGG the project, so they told him to go visit Guillermo del Toro at his house and discuss some ideas.

Freaking studios! Justin Theroux plays Leezar, a crazy old wizard who wants to keep Belladonna (played by Deschanel) so that he can take her virginity and make her give birth to a dragon. Fabeous is in love with Belladonna and goes on a rescue mission to return Belladonna so they can get married.

Along the way there are crazy detours, such as an old (puppet made) Great Wise Wizard, hot topless girls that capture the guys and force them into a pit with a hand monster, and a sexy girl named Isabel who kicks ass and is on a quest for some blood.

What I loved about this was hearing the changes they made. One of them was just funny: Danny McBride said he had a lot of horse scenes, but he sucks at riding horses so he immediately started writing them out.

Another one was them finding out something smooth and shiny would cost a lot in effects, and if done wrong it would work horribly, so they created a creature with scales instead. They also found out it would be cheaper to create a single villain with 5 heads then 5 separate villains, so they created a 5 headed hand that happened to be one of my favorite scenes.

The movie is heartfelt even though they continue with the raunchy humor and drop the f-bomb probably over 200 times, which makes it something worth watching. It was like Pineapple Express, the first time I saw it I really didn't know what to think, but afterwards I was laughing about so many quotes and I'm dying to watch it again.

Go out and see this one!