Friday, September 14, 2012

[Freya-dæg] An Audience With Your Highness

{Your Highness' movie poster, found on Wikipedia.}

Plot Summary
The Good
The Bad
Judgment
Closing

Back to Top
Plot Summary

There is an ancient prophesy in the land that says that if a great warlock can lay with a virgin when the two moons meet, he will create a dragon. The Order of the Golden Knights has stopped the warlock before, but many years later all of the knights of the Order have been wiped out, a great warlock has arisen and the moons begin to converge.

Of course, none of that matters to the brash prince Thadeous (Danny McBride), son of King Tallous (Charles Dance) and brother of the all-favoured Fabious (James Franco). He's about as concerned with prophecies and quests as a bear is with a block of cheese. But when his brother returns from yet another successful quest with the virgin Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) only to have his wedding crashed and his bride carried off by none other than the great wizard Leezar himself (Justin Theroux), Thadeous is forced by his father to join Fabious on his quest to save his bride and ultimately the kingdom.

Will Fabious be successful in averting a doom that will envelope the land, though he is beset on all sides by villains both traitorous and bad? Will Thadeous grow to be more than a spoiled bawd of a king's son? Or will Lazeer prevail?

Only by watching can you find out if this disparate bunch of questors can break Leezar and make him scream Your Highness!

Back to Top
The Good

Your Highness's cast is simply star-studded. Zooey Deschanel, James Franco, and Charles Dance — all of them have sizeable roles in the film and bring all of their acting chops to bear on the film as a whole. What's more, even the lesser known Danny McBride does a great job as Thadeous.

But what really sends this movie over the top in terms of the acting is the sheer devotion that all of the players show to keeping things medieval. The dialogue, the delivery, everything is nicely tinged with the very stuff of high fantasy. It isn't necessarily accurate to actual historical fact, but neither are many high fantasy stories, and neither are many of the medieval romances on which they're based - something which this movie gets quite close to being.

However, rather than being written by some gallant-minded self-styled bard, Your Highness is closer to what might have come about had Geoffrey Chaucer ever wrote a non-historical verse romance.

The movie's writing is also quite strong, and though the plot develops in a more or less expected way, there are enough fantastical elements to keep your interest throughout all of its 100 minutes.

The movie also nicely straddles the line of satire while also keeping the movie's illusion in tact. Watching it, it's very easy to get the sense that the actors know that they're playing in roles and through ridiculous situations, but they maintain their act all the same. The fourth wall is left firmly in place, so much so that the best analogy is that this movie is the way that players of a D&D game might imagine their own games as they're playing them.

And, just like many a D&D game, the movie has some unexpectedly dark moments, such as when the quest seems to be entirely hopeless and Fabious exclaims that "Belladonna will get raped and die" if they don't get to her in time.

But, most importantly, setting this movie apart from In the Name of the King, is that nothing in it is contrived for the sake of action or a good laugh. Instead all of the jokes arise out of the characters' personalities and the setting itself.

Back to Top
The Bad

However, Rotten Tomatoes' consensus on this movie does have it right - the jokes here are almost all based on the same theme. In this regard it's kind of like something that Trey Parker and Matt Stone might have written, and it does run the risk of getting a little thin by the end. Though that remains as only a risk.

Also, there are some things in the movie that are pretty outlandishly off when it comes to medieval culture, even that of a fantasy realm. Such as this:


Powdered wigs and pale faces weren't quite a male fashion statement until the 18th century, which is just a few centuries too late.

There are also some elements introduced early on in the movie that could use some more explanation: Thadeous' distaste for mechanical things (focused entirely on his brother's mechanical bird companion), and why the "triangle face" that Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) pulls scares him.

{The horrific "triangle face" in action.}


However, as the film picks up and goes on, these things are forgotten by viewer and writer alike. Adding them into the development of Thadeous would have made this movie all the stronger, though. Perhaps, in fact, instead of just temptations to indulge himself, he could have had to face a mechanical being with a "triangle face" in the labyrinth where he and the party find the Blade of Unicorn.

Back to Top
Judgment

Your Highness is a grand farce of a medieval romance comedy. The humour can be overbearing, but the actors, the script, and the chemistry between them all keeps things going at a lovely trot from start to finish. What's more, this movie passed one of the ultimate tests: it was as fun to watch a second time as it was the first.

So, Freya, don't mind the lewd way in which this one comes on to you as you scoop it from the Field of Fallen Films, nor its lascivious words as you fly with it from there to where all great movies deserve to be.

Back to Top
Closing

A Glass Darkly is going to be undergoing some changes starting next week.

Monday's and Friday's entries will continue as usual, but instead of Annotated Links throughout the week and an editorial in the middle, Annotated Links will be moved to Saturday and expanded to five links from three. The editorial is being dropped and will be replaced with a brief update on my writing endeavours that goes live every Sunday.

Check out the first of these Sunday entries on the 17th of the month!

Back to Top

No comments:

Post a Comment