Your Highness

I suppose Natalie Portman doing Your Highness is like the prom queen in high school making a point of dropping by the nerd table in study hall to show that she gets along with everybody. The nerds get excited, but she may feel embarrassed.

Your Highness is a parody of sword-and-sorcerer films that recalls the work of Mel Brooks. There's one big difference--this is one isn't funny. Mostly the laughs are structured to come from medieval characters using modern swear words, but "motherfucker" isn't a very funny swear word. There are also a lot of penis jokes, and there's a scene of a minotaur with a massive erection waving around.

The film was directed by David Gordon Green, and is there a more bizarre career turn than his? He started as an indie darling, but his work has gotten increasing puerile. I mean, I liked the first two-thirds of Pineapple Express, but liked very little of this, and I see he has further damaged his reputation by doing The Sitter.

The film was co-written by and stars Danny McBride. Somewhere along the line, McBride got the erroneous notion that he was funny. I suppose it's too late, but I wish there could be some kind of intervention to get him into a new line of work, like accounting. He plays the dissolute brother of a prince (James Franco, also slumming) that is a great hero. Franco and McBride go on a quest to rescue Franco's fiancee (Zooey Deschanel) from an evil wizard (Justin Theroux). Along the way they meet Portman, and they all team up together.

I didn't laugh once at this film--I don't even think I smiled. More often I grimaced. This is the work of a seventh-grade mentality that has just discovered sex. Not only are there no laughs, but when it tries to play it straight as an adventure it falls woefully short.

Portman's presence got me to see this film. I'll give you this one, Natalie, but please, no more. Stick with the popular crowd.