Your Highness

" Your Highness"

"As Reported by Dollyforme"

Your Highness is a straightforward homage to medieval quest adventures. BUT – this movie has Natalie Portman (Academy Award Winner) with toilet humor, nudity and lots of sexual situations. I laughed and I though Natalie was hot – so read on. Natalie Portman, undoubtedly prized because of her peerless British accent, is making her first excursion into a British Fantasy movie.

Thadeous (McBride) and Fabious (Franco) are the adult sons of King Tallious (Charles Dance). Fabious, the elder and heir to the throne, is a renowned warrior who has embarked upon many successful quests and proven his mettle in battles against monsters and wizards. Thadeous, the younger, spends his days drinking and getting stoned, whoring, and procrastinating. When we first encounter him, he is about to be executed for a sexual dalliance with the wife of the King of the Dwarves. He and his faithful manservant, Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker), escape that predicament through blind luck.

The kingdom is delighted when Fabious arrives from his most recent quest in the company of the beautiful Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel), whom he intends to wed. However, the wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux), from whose captivity she was rescued, steals her back. Fabious mounts a party to seek out the enchanted weapon capable of slaying Leezar, and the king orders Thadeous to accompany his brother. The journey starts badly when the knights accompanying the princes betray their masters. Things look up, however, when the brothers' paths cross with that of the warrior-woman Isabel (Natalie Portman), who has reasons of her own to want the enchanted sword.

Most of the humor in Your Highness is obvious, tepid, and often crude. There are some amusing one-liners but the majority of the comedy makes one realize how brilliant Monty Python and the Holy Grail is. The Pythons understood how to do this sort of thing right. A lot of the raunchy material in Your Highness seems awkward and juvenile, targeted at kids too young to see an R-rated movie. The fantasy aspect is straightforward Swords & Sorcery 101. Perhaps surprisingly, it works reasonably well until the lewd jokes get in the way, testifying to how durable fantasy clichés are. Still, despite some nice special effects, no one is going to mistake this for The Lord of the Rings.

Your Highness is not an actors' movie despite the presence of an Oscar winner and an Oscar nominee. Anyway – go see the movie, well worth the time spent gawking at Natalie Portman.