High-fantasy movies never do well at the box office. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is the exception, not the rule, and R-rated comedies have always faced an uphill battle, which is why it makes no sense that Your Highness was ever greenlit in the first place.
The sex-obsessed stoner comedy is, on paper, a concept that would lose every studio money, but then again, director David Gordon Green was coming off Pineapple Express, so if anyone could make a fantasy stoner sex comedy work in 2011, it would be him. Instead of redefining the rules of Hollywood, Your Highness was a massive bomb and the only time it ever comes up in 2025 is as a punchline.
Starring James Franco as the charming Prince Fabious and Danny McBride as his lazy, significantly less successful brother, Prince Thadeous, Your Highness looks and sounds like a parody. That’s the twist, it’s played straight. Or as straight as a film that features an evil wizard (Justin Theroux) attempting to impregnate a virgin (Zooey Deschanel) in order to fulfill an ancient prophecy that foretells the birth of a dragon.
The film’s tone is as uneven as a see-saw, losing all the fantasy trappings to make another gay panic or sex joke. Even McBride’s ad-libs fall short against the weight of the unwieldy script that can’t figure out what type of movie it wants to be.
The only part of Your Highness that received any notice when it finally debuted, after two years on the shelf, was a brief shot of Natalie Portman’s bare butt in the trailer. Sex may sell, but Portman’s stunt double’s butt as the highlight of the trailer didn’t lead to many butts in seats when the film debuted. It also hid the fact that Portman’s Isabel doesn’t appear for most of Your Highness, which is a shame, as her comedic chemistry with Danny McBride proves that the Oscar-winner can do anything she sets her mind to.
Your Highness was considered crass and out of touch in 2011, and today, parts of it have aged as well as the painting in Dorian Grey’s attic. The Minotaur alone would be enough for the film to be canceled today. This makes it all the more shocking that the scene was adjusted when a studio executive passed along a script note to make it even dirtier than it already was. It’s another way the movie attempted to defy conventional wisdom on the way to success. Creatively, it brought David Gordon Green’s vision to life, but financially, it was a disaster.
$50 million is cheap for an epic fantasy, but on the high end for a comedy. Your Highness didn’t earn back its budget, finishing its theatrical run at $28 million worldwide. You might think it went on to become a hit on DVD, but that didn’t happen.
Gordon Green’s earlier film, Pineapple Express, left a better impression, and his recent Halloween trilogy is a flawed but fun take on a horror icon. Your Highness is a forgotten film.
What went wrong with the ambitious stoner sex comedy comes down to refusing to fit into any single genre. Years before he was canceled, James Franco was miscast as Fabious, a role that would have hit harder with an actor who could be the straight man to McBride’s wild ad-libs and one-liners. Imagine Orlando Bloom, Charlie Hunnam, or Garrett Hedlund in the role instead, and the comedy would flow better instead of two stoners jockeying for the position of “the funny one.”
Your Highness is not a good movie, but its unique blend of genres and series of staggeringly bad decisions combine to make it a fascinating watch. You’ll either laugh along with McBride’s twisted sense of humor or laugh, wondering who thought the Wize Wizard was a good idea.
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