Your Highness Movie Review

Podcastfilmreview

So this movie was pretty dumb but that was obviously the point. A lot of people have criticized its unevenness. Did it want to be a satire of 1980s fantasy movies or a love letter to those movies? It is hard to say…

I liked the movie a lot and found some of the comedic scenes almost genius. I’ve read a lot of places, but don’t quote me, that the script’s dialgoue was almost entirely improvised. It definitely feels that way.

Improv is where Danny Mcbride, the film’s star, shines. He plays the Danny Mcbride character, but that character will never get old.

The director, David Gordon Green, was America’s answer to the legitimate arthouse director. To see a really good drama with a similar cast check out All the Real Girls. You’ll laugh at the difference of style and execution.

That Gordon Green would go and make this movie goes to show that not all movies have to be sophisticated.  I’m pretty sure that this flick was making a legitamate attempt to pay homage to movies like Willow, Labyrinth, Excalibur, maybe Time Bandits, The Conan flicks, and others. But then again maybe it wasn’t? I’m fairly confident I saw the little fairy guys from Willow in this movie, but maybe I was just looking to hard?

That’s kind of the point. I have no idea what the movie was trying to be, but it is probably better that way. The biggest problem is that a lot of the characters are just there. They don’t do anything. I’m sure this stems from the lack of scripting, but surely Green should have have foreseen this and knocked out important things for the characters to do.

The plot of the movie is the Mcbride’s character must prove his heroics to save his soon-to-be sister-in-law from an evil wizard. What specifically happens is unimportant but if you’ve ever seen one of those 80s flicks you’ll get the point. My only gripe with the movie is that the action scenes are way too fucking long. When nothing is at stake, action scenes need to be pithy and fun. These were not.



The movie stands between being very good and very bad. I’m pretty sure its good, but you might think differently. My only hope, now that Green has gone mainstream, is that his fellow North Carolinian filmmaker, Ramin Bahrani,will make a crazy journey to the mainstream as well. A man can dream.

-Collin