Review of Your Highness (2011) by Shiira — 20 Apr 2011

What Thaddeus(Danny McBride) needs is a ginsu knife. After such a huge buildup, the famed Sword of Unicorn proves to be a disappointment, initially anyway. Billed as being the only weapon capable of defeating the powerful sorcerer Leezar(Justin Theroux), the unicorn blade is useless when Thaddeus tries in vain to cut through the hard keratin surface of the minotaur's horn, in what turns out to be a momentary setback for the emerging warrior's need to commemorate his first important kill.

Discovering the sword in the labyrinth is Thaddeus' entree into manhood. Long overshadowed by his celebrated older brother Fabious(James Franco), the royal family's black sheep isn't leaving the scene of his greatest triumph without a memento.

He improvises. Quite pointedly, Thaddeus severs the part man, part bull's penis, then makes a necklace out of the appendage, as a sort of overcompensation for all those times the shiftless pothead felt emasculated by the heroic deeds that Fabious would perform on a regular basis.

The big penis gives Thaddeus the confidence to take over the reins of leadership from Isabel(Natalie Portman), who had previously outmaneuvered the then-unformed man, by asserting himself as the classic Byronic hero in their joint effort to rescue the king's favored son and his fiance Belladonna(Zooey Deschanel) from Leezar's castle, site of the sorcerer's plans to conceive a dragon with the virgin maiden.

When Thaddeus slays the kingdom's arch-nemesis with a single jab of the unicorn-based polearm, he unseats Fabious' position as the prevailing hero, but perhaps it's a victory tempered with the realization that his older brother had to pay a steep price for his ascension into the pantheon of living legends.

During a private conversation with Courtney(Rasmus Hardiker), the court jester, Fabious admits to envying Thaddeus, and this is before he learns that his less-decorated sibling, contrary to the cowardly reputation which precedes him, carries a heart that keeps a latent warrior rhythm.

He never knew Thaddeus donned armor and parried swords in private. He didn't mind his sibling's slovenly ways. Fabious respects him unconditionally. He seems genuinely pleased about his younger brother's mutual feelings of respect.

But maybe it shouldn't be all that surprising that the gallant defender openly desires the proto-hippie's less demanding way of life. In a scene for the enquiring moviegoer who may have always wondered about Yoda's libido, especially during the training sequence in Irvin Kershner's "The Empire Strikes Back", the Great Wise Wizard(a Henson-esque muppet in the Peter Jackson "Meet the Feebles" tradition), we learn, had molested, or perhaps, raped Fabious, when the young boy served as the sage's apprentice.

Even worse, the perverted wizard molests him still. Subconsciously, the decapitated Cyclops head that Fabious brings back to the castle as a trophy at the outset of "Your Highness", perhaps acts as a catharsis for this child molestation survivor, since the severed head may be a byproduct of some abeyant hostility toward the accosting wizard.

After all, a one-eyed Cyclops is a commonly-used euphemism for "penis". Damaged psychologically by the long-term abuse at the hands of the dumpy child predator, is it no wonder that Fabious should take a virgin for his bride, somebody who shares his naivety towards consensual sex? "Your Highness", taken at face value, is like "The Lord of the Rings" retooled as a Tommy Chong vehicle, but on another level, this stoner adventure flick is akin to a Freudian take on Peter Yates' "Krull".