Movie Review: Your Highness

Your Highness feels a lot like a dated film. Not because of its humour, much of it is as dark and edgy as found in any modern comedy, but because of the way it approaches its subject. Very much in the style of The Princess Bride (1987), Your Highness is a fantasy adventure film with lots of black comedy and stoner jokes thrown in for a modern audience. It is not surprising however that these two very different themes do not sit well together at all.

On returning home from a perilous quest, Fabious (James Franco) is set upon on the day of his wedding by evil wizard Leezar (an unrecognisable Justin Theroux) who steals his bride with a view to fulfilling an ancient prophecy. With his slobbish brother Thadeous (Danny McBride) in tow, they set out on a quest to reclaim the lost princess and destroy the Leezar for good.

The film's fantasy and comedic elements rarely gel.

Your Highness has come under fire for, in a similar way to recent interminable bullshit Sucker Punch (2011), supposedly being sexist and misogynist in its portrayal of women; and as with Sucker Punch, slapping a banner of controversy upon this film is garnering it with attention it does not deserve. Much of the humour is dark, but not outside the realm of Family guy or something similar. Blazing Saddles (1974)’ humour is in many ways much more controversial, and that was made almost 40 years ago. Comparisons with Mel Brookes’ fine send-ups stop there however, as little of the invention or wit of something like Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein (1974) is on show in Your Highness. Much of the humour is lost amongst drawn out fight sequences that make the film look like a medium budget, low quality fantasy film, rather than a comedy. There are a few giggles to be had amongst the silliness, but the film ends up being a rather contrived, rather boring exercise stupid dick-jokes and camp nudity and dialog. Academy award winner Natalie Portman and Academy award nominee James Franco seem to enjoy themselves, and most of the funny one-liners come from Danny McBride as Thadeous, despite how utterly hateful his character is. However the film’s warring houses of dark humour and fantasy fun never really come together, and the result is a messy, if occasionally enjoyable trashy farce.

DVD Review: The Illusionist

The line between sentimentality and heartfelt characterisation is a thin one at the best of times. Many directors and writers, Steven Spielberg springs to mind, straddle the dangerous tightrope throughout their career creating some films that are genuinely moving; and others that require the use of a sick bag. The Illusionist, not to be confused with The Illusionist (2006) starring Edward Norton, is a French/British animation directed by Sylvain Chomet and based loosely on an un-filmed Jacques Tati script from 1956. Tati himself has somewhat of a controversial legacy, with his comedy remaining in the hearts of his fans; many of his critics cite his turbulent personal life: and to a certain degree, this is something of a farewell to them.

A French Illusionist living in Paris in the 1950s is beset by unemployment. After a dry spell he travels to England to try to make something of himself; and after making a few contacts ends up in a rainy Scottish village performing for the locals. Amongst them is a young girl who stows away and follows him when he travels to Edinborough, and the two begin a new life in the big city.

The film is often extremely pretty

The first thing that strikes you about The Illusionist is its almost complete lack of dialog: snatches of French and occasionally English are heard throughout the film but nothing in the way of a conversation is ever shown; most of the interactions between characters being visual and indicated by noises. This may seem incidental but it is vital to anyone who hopes to enjoy the film, as the lack of words is occasionally rather alienating, and gives the film a rather empty feeling. The film looks beautiful and the animation is wonderful, but the characters, despite their unique looks, are rather hollow. The Illusionist has the feeling of a short film and, despite being only 76 minutes long, drags rather and the more bleak sections of the film are quite dull. Anybody unfamiliar with Tati’s style of often silent comedy will find the film’s silence boring and frustrating, and many who are aware of his legacy may be put off by the film’s whimsical sentimentality; particularly the movie’s closing few minutes. Less comedic and more lightly sad and occasionally sweet, The Illusionist is a short, if rather dull tale of growing old and that very filmic contrivance of surrogate parenthood; but its narrative never engages in the way of other animations that address such issues like Up (2009) or Howl’s Moving Castle (2004).

Movie Review: Sucker Punch

Watchmen (2009) was a deeply flawed film. Not least because director Zach Snyder, who had shown himself to be an artist when it came to gripping, and crucially fun, action scenes with the stonking Dawn of the Dead remake (2004) and shouty slow-motion-swordfight-porn 300 (2007), lost all directorial sensibilities and allowed his reverence of the source material to smother the style through which he had gained success. Watchmen lacked Zach Snyder, and suffered for it. More Zach Snyder was what we wanted, so Sucker Punch was what we got: possibly one of the most head-achingly stupid mainstream blockbuster to come out in the past 20 years.

Baby Doll (Emily Browning), after being framed for her sister’s murder and cast aside so her greedy step father can inherit her deceased parent’s wealth, is sent to an insane asylum apparently only inhabited by mind-bogglingly pretty girls. As she begins to plan her escape, she finds herself falling into strange and fantastical worlds of zombie soldiers, dragons and robots, as she and her other unbelievably beautiful friends battle to find their freedom.

The dream sequences carry no emotional weight.

If that sounds simple enough, it isn’t. One of the film’s myriad problems is its complete lack of narrative flow. The removal of needless plot exposition is a necessity, but Zach Snyder seems to explain nothing: not until the final, and screamingly unsatisfying, last five or ten minutes do we find out what is really going on. It is unclear as to whether or not the last moments are a plot twist, the tone seems to suggest so; however anybody with half a brain would be able to see exactly what is going on from the start, and as such the middle section of the film carries almost no weight at all. 

Exploitation at 12A. The result: all bark and no bite.

The fact is that all of the Sucker Punch’s stupidities could be forgotten, all of its silliness forgiven, if it had merely had faith in itself. Trite this phrase may be; but one thing that fiction over the decades has taught us is that if the author can make you believe their tale, however fantastical it is, it is ultimately a strong piece of storytelling. Sucker Punch’s confidence neither lies in the real world asylum, too briefly shown to be worth caring about, or its fantasies. The film’s strengths lie in Zach Snyder’s ability to direct action; a World War One inspired scene is particularly well-imagined: but the scenes carry no weight because they’re only in Baby Doll’s head. Neo could die in the Matrix (1999) and that’s why you cared; you knew Sam from Brazil (1985) well enough in the real world to be worried that the fantasies that take him over could overwhelm him: but none of these elements are in Sucker Punch. The fantasies are essentially dreams, so you don’t care, and the real world is something that can’t be controlled so you don’t care about that either. Zach Snyder either needs to have faith in his fantasy, or not dilute his reality, because the upshot is a messy, plotless videogame without the pleasure of interactivity. The pretty girls only stamping home the fact that this is an exploitation movie without the teeth, a two hour music video with some competent action scenes but no cerebral content.