"Your Highness" Reviewed! (Fennecritic Film Review)
Jaspian the Fennecritic Reviews...
Your Highness
Once again, friends dragged me out to a movie that I had no prior knowledge of, or any real desire to see - but they desired to see it, and so I went. Apparently the film was by the creators of a supposedly-good comedy “Pineapple Express” - which I also know nothing about and had never seen... but a couple of them had seen it and felt it warranted a viewing of Your Highness. Honestly, I was very unimpressed by the trailer that I saw for the film, and so I had very low expectations for it.
The film follows a prince who, between the King’s two sons, is a total loser. His brother is constantly going on quests and slaying horrible beasts and saving maidens etc etc, one of whom he decides to marry. On their wedding day, this maiden is kidnapped by an evil sorcerer, and the heroic brother decides to go after her. The loser brother has no interest in it, but he’s ordered to help by his father, the King. Hilarity ensues.
Just so that there’s no confusion, this is not an intelligent film. The humor is extremely vulgar and otherwise entirely slapstick. This is also not really my kind of movie. For the most part, I don’t care for comedies (I consider the apex of movie comedy to be the late-80’s “Naked Gun” trilogy, and very little has been made since then that’s worth mention), and those comedies I do like aren’t the crass stupid-humor kind. In fact, I find myself laughing at Action movies more than Comedies, these days. Feel free to read this either way - that perhaps I’m not the best person top judge Your Highness, or that its just another stupid-comedy - you decide!
But I did enjoy it a little. There was a chuckle here and there at some non-sequitors, but there weren’t any gut-busters. One note that I think would interest furries in general is that there’s a minotaur in the film... a very very male minotaur... with a huge penis... humorously trying to rape a squire, and everything is shown. I was obviously surprised by this. I didn’t think they could show that kinda stuff even in R-rated movies, but apparently they can.
The pacing was pretty good, except for some of the action sequences, which seemed to take a bit too long. The story was a little lame - really nothing special about it. The action choreography was shoddy. It was obvious that the creators of the film were a bit out-of-their-element with action. Overall it was very predictable and “Done Before”, except perhaps the minotaur rape scene (as aforementioned) but also there was a moment where a character was “surfing” on the back of a bad guy who was being dragged by a horse-drawn carriage during one of the chase scenes. That I’d never seen before and honestly I’m a bit surprised its never been done before (that I know of...) and I applaud them for it. But it doesn’t really make up for anything.
Its an interesting film from beginning to end, but its not very good. I give it two ears drooped and the recommendation to skip it unless you have some burning desire to see it. If you do want to see it that badly, its not really a film that needs the movie-theater screen to get the full impact. I’d wait for Netflix.
Thanks for reading!
-Jaspy