Say No To Drugs, Yes To Minotaur Junk

Danny McBride and James Franco’s latest film, “Your Highness” has been described by critics as “a bad fantasy film with swearing and dick jokes.” (Obsessed With Film) Other critics have stated, “Unless I'm being tortured, I'll never see Your Highness again.” (HollywoodChicago.com) And in one final crushing blow, “The result is a seemingly endless comedic black hole that feels like a cross between one of Mel Brooks' lesser vehicles and what one might get from a bunch of frat boys with a video camera, and after-hours access to the local Medieval Times.” ( eFilmCritic.com)

Well, I say that’s just ridiculous. For starters, frat boys are lame, and Medieval Times is way cool. This conclusion has nothing to do with the fact that I spend too much time at renaissance fairs. Personally, I prefer to think the general populous needs to stop seeking the wisdom of Plato in movies where James Franco gets molested by a tiny, purple, wizard muppet.

Yes, “Your Highness” is supposed to be a comedy, and if you don’t think it’s funny then that’s certainly a problem. For you. I, however, found it hysterical, and you can lob as many rotten cyber-cabbages at my Internet noggin as you like, but it still won’t change my opinion. “Your Highness” cracked me up.

In numerous reviews, the film was referred to as a stoner comedy. I guess I’m not really so sure what that term means anymore. Unlike McBride and Franco’s other collaboration “Pineapple Express,” smoking pot was not a crucial plotline in this film. Sure, the previously mentioned pervert wizard has McBride and Franco smoke a bowl to “share in his visions,” but one marijuana smoking puppet does not a stoner movie make.

So do these critics mean low brow humor, then? If you look on rotten tomatoes, the word crude is repeated over and over again in the reviews. There certainly were multiple jokes at the expense of male genitalia. Fornicating was a frequent topic, not to mention the plethora of half naked ladies literally frolicking through the woods and the glimpse of Natalie Portman diving bare-assed into a river. I guess my trashy Hollywood lifestyle has desensitized me to this bawdy behavior because I just don’t see how a dismembered minotaur penis crosses the line from disgustingly hilarious into a “shrieking example of Hollywood wastefulness at its most obvious.” Frankly, I don’t even know what that means. I must have missed the lecture on decoding critic babble in film school.

It’s all too easy to dismiss a film as being too “crude” but I’m going to go out on a crazy limb and say that despite the innuendos and suggested homosexual bestiality, this story has real heart and substance. It’s about a guy who’s jealous of his beefy, hotpants older brother, and is struggling to prove himself equally worthy. This theme is almost as common in fantasy literature as the whole “chosen one” storyline, which tells me that these guys weren’t just sitting around, cracking penis jokes when they first came up with the idea. Or maybe they were. When I meet Danny McBride, I’ll have to ask him.

I know fantasy is an acquired taste, but what I can’t wrap my head around is that if this is just a crude, stupid, stoner comedy, than why did I enjoy it so much? I’m no prude, but let’s just say I don’t enjoy Adam Sandler movies with the same gusto as I did in my elementary school days. And I certainly don’t smoke pot. Seriously, earlier in the blog post I had to google “smoke a bowl” to make sure I’d used the phrase correctly. Yet, when I first saw the trailer for this film I thought, “Golly gee! A renaissance comedy! I wish I had written something like this!” At no point did I think, stupid frat boy movie. So have all these critics misjudged and mislabeled the film? Or am I simply oblivious to my own cinematic tastes?

Like with most situations in my life, I shall avoid a potential identity crisis by choosing to blame someone else. This movie is funny, and everyone else is wrong.