Your Highness - Stoner LARP

Natalie Portman sure is getting around at the moment. I can think of four recent releases that she's starred in. I guess that's what happens when you decide to have a baby and need to make some reddies before putting your career on hold for a bit. She must have a strange agent, as she's been in an odd collection of films. At the start of the year she put in an outstanding performance in the exemplary 'Black Swan', now she's playing the classic fantasy fiction female warrior role in 'Your Highness' and seems to be in it for the pay cheque. And you wouldn’t believe the number of pictures of Ms Portman that come up when you google “Your Highness Film”, or maybe you would.

Directed by the same guy who did 'Pineapple Express' and starring Danny McBride (of 'Tropic Thunder' and 'Pineapple Express') and James Franco (who was also in 'Pineapple Express' - can you spot the theme?), you know what type of film you're in for with ‘Your Highness’. 'Subtlety' is not a word I'm going to have to use too often in this review, 'nob gag' is more like it. The plot is that in a far far away standard fantasy world of Dwarves and magic there is a rightous and noble prince Fabius (Franco) and his not-so-impressive stoner brother Thadius (Mcbride). Fabius' newly-recued bride-to-be is captured by the evil wizard Lezar and the brothers must quest to rescue her - with hilarious consequences. Not exactly genre-breaking stuff up to this point, but of course the fantasy plot isn't what 'Your Highness' is all about. It's about putting a modern stoner comedy in a Tolkienesque setting, giving your characters plenty of anachronistic things to say then sitting back and laughing at crude nob gags. Of which there are many.

I read something on one of the IMDB message board by someone who thought that 'Your Highness' is more of a spoof of LARP culture than the fantasy genre in general. I think that makes a lot of sense, since a lot of the characters in the film seem deliberately not to take their own roles seriously while others are being massively over-acted. I think I've watched enough films to tell the difference between bad casting and a good performance that looks like bad acting - so I think this is probably something the film makers were planning. Fabius is a spoof of the LARPer who love the roleplay, his brother the guy who's just there for the drinks, Portman's character (Isobel) the lone girl in the LARP group overcompensating by taking everything way too seriously, Lezar the nerdy gamesmaster. Suddenly it all falls into place.

See - IMDB message boards aren't always total drivel.

In the end though 'Your Highness' is a funny film. I'm not sure why watching medieval characters behave like 21st century stoners is as funny as it is, but it is. What more can you want than that?