Review: Your Highness

Is there any director around with a career arc as unexpected and fascinating as David Gordon Green? The 36-year-old auteur began his career with works of beautiful poetic expression. Films like George Washington, All the Real Girls and Undertown all prompted comparisons to the works of Terrence Malick, with Malick even producing Undertow. Those films announced the arrival of a major new talent, someone with deft command of a camera and a poet’s soul. And then something unexpected happened. Green made a movie in one of the least illustrious genres: the stoner comedy. The result was Pineapple Express, a film that demonstrated that David Gordon Green could play in the comedic sandbox with the best of them, delivering a weed/buddy comedy that ranks with the very best of them.

And now, nearly three years later, we have Your Highness. When it was originally announced the project sounded way too bizarre and esoteric to ever make it through the studio system. A big budget homage to 80’s sword and sorcery flicks like Krull and Conan the Destroyer mixed with a stoner comedy? The fact that it was made at all seemed a beautiful accident, a case of someone getting to realize their strangest inside joke on 2000+ screens, demographics and focus testing be damned! Being a big fan of David Gordon Green, as well as of co-writer and star Danny McBride, I expected something that was nothing short of amazing.

What I got was…something else entirely. Don’t get me wrong, the film is funny. Very funny I’d say. But Your Highness sometimes doesn’t seem like it’s going for big laughs. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it’s going for laughs at all. Rather, the film seems to be attempting to be a legitimate entry into that fantasy genre that it seemed, from the previews at least, to be sending up.

Thadeous (Danny McBride) is the ne’er-do-well prince of a magical kingdom. He is the black sheep son of the King (Charles Dance), content to smoke weed and covet dwarf women with his manservant Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) while his dashing older brother Fabious (James Franco) gets all the glory. When Fabious’ new bride to be Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) is snatched by the evil wizard Leezar, the two brothers set out on a mighty quest to vanquish Leezar (Justin Theroux) and save the virgin maiden before she can be deflowered. Along the way they run into a Wise Wizard (who resembles a purple Yoda, if Yoda was a pederast), a fearsome Minotaur and a vengeful (and possibly psychotic) warrior woman, Isabel (Natalie Portman, clearly having fun with all this nonsense).

It’s odd to read in other pieces written about the film that it is a satire or a spoof of the genre; it’s really not. It plays many of the fantasy elements surprisingly straight, with goofy effects, strange creatures (primarily realized through practical effects) and a heroic yet nonsensical quest. The comedy comes more from the disparity in seeing Danny McBride’s usual comedic persona inserted, bad English accent and all, into this fantasy setting. Thus he runs around reacting to things like a Minotaur and a five headed snake monsters in the same manner that Kenny Powers might react to them. Aside from a few visual gags and assorted scatological and weed jokes, it's about the only source of humor in the film. It’s funny as far as it goes (McBride could eat an apple on film and I’d probably laugh my ass off), but it’s odd how content the film is to stay in one mode of comedy.

The rest of the cast is game, although not given terribly much to do. James Franco inhabits the straight man role admirably, adding some charm as the somewhat vapid, but noble warrior. His dynamic with Danny McBride, while standard within modern, Apatow-infused comedy, adds a slight but effective injection of emotion to the proceedings. Justin Theroux is a highlight as Leezar, attacking every line with slimy abandon. He’s easily one of the funniest parts of the film. Natalie Portman in a small role, appears to be having a ball playing in a comedy this offbeat and unconventional. Zooey Deschanel doesn’t really register as her character is a device more than anything else. Special mention must be made, however, of Rasmus Hardiker’s Courtney, who steals the film right out from under McBride and Franco on several occasions. As the put upon manservant, his facial expressions alone make the experience worthwhile.

What strikes me most about Your Highness is how resolutely weird the whole thing is. I went into the film with a certain set of expectations, and I can safely say that those expectations were not met. What I did receive, however, was something that I’m glad to have seen, and will most likely see again in the near future. It’s not every film that can feature swordplay and weed jokes, a straight faced adventure story with copious amounts of swearing and minotaur penis (yes, minotaur penis). The film that it most resembles, to me, is 2009’s Land of the Lost. That film (which also featured Danny McBride in a pivotal role) alienated critics and audiences with its dumb humor bolstering a story that retained a perverse fidelity to its source material. Like that film, I understand that not everyone will be on board with it, but the critical vitriol aimed its way is a little puzzling.

There has been much hand-wringing and nay saying from many mainstream critics this past week about how David Gordon Green has supposedly been led astray. It remains utterly fascinating how this director, so adept at evoking the sacred, can turn on a dime and produce something so resolutely profane. Unlike others, however, this development doesn’t cause me to despair. From the looks of it the man is making exactly the kinds of films that he wants to make, and if his creative muse is leading him to such exceedingly odd places as this then so be it. This might not be the film that many were expecting, but it’s off-kilter fantasy quest mixed with cheerfully lowbrow humor is an adventure not without its own unique charm.

Review: Cedar Rapids

There’s something to be said for a minor work, a solid double, a film that doesn’t break new ground or dazzle with its originality, but rather achieves its own modest aims with skill and charm. A film like Cedar Rapids doesn’t need over the top gags or a high concept premise to work, only a director with a sure sense of understated comedy as well as an able cast that can bring the laughs, but also the heart when it is most needed.

Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is a good-hearted and hopelessly naïve insurance salesman who has never left the small town that he was born in. After his predecessor dies under, shall we say, scandalous circumstances, Tim is chosen by his boss (Steven Root) to travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in order to attend a high-profile regional conference in the hopes that their agency can retain the coveted Two Diamond Award that they have won for the past two years. Along the way he is befriended by a group of fellow salespeople: Ronald (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Dean (John C. Reilly) and Joan (Anne Heche) who show him how to lighten up and enjoy himself within the competitive arena of Midwest Insurance Sales.

As I said before, Cedar Rapids is far from groundbreaking. Plot-wise, things unfold about the way that you’d expect them to, and Helms’ character travels a predictable character arc. But the actors find delightful and unexpected ways to color within the lines of this standard framework. Ed Helms has long been impressing on TV’s The Office and in film roles like The Hangover, but rarely has his clueless nice guy shtick been so well utilized. Lippe is a character who is so hopeless that he is flustered beyond belief at the first sight of his African-American roommate Ronald (with Isiah Whitlock portraying perhaps the least threatening person on the planet). Helms plays his part perfectly, always allowing the humor to come from his character, which allows us to laugh at him and sympathize with him in equal measure. Likewise, Anne Heche allows Joan to turn on a dime from raunchy to sweet, and her overt flirtations with Tim eventually develop into something more interesting, an understated affection that is nonetheless a welcome reprieve from the quick-fix romantic pairings in most Hollywood fare. Isiah Whitlock Jr. is often hilarious as the almost emotionless Ronald, who gets his moment to shine with perhaps my favorite running joke in the entire film (involving, funnily enough given his role on the show, HBO’s The Wire). Other performers like Stephen Root and Sigourney Weaver (in a funny part as Helm’s grade-school teacher who he’s now having an affair with), bring personality to their minor parts.

Special mention must be made of John C. Reilly. Reilly has become one of those performers who automatically enlivens any film he’s in. In a departure from his earlier dramatic persona in such films as Magnolia and Chicago, he has settled into a new comedic style that he inhabits with gusto. Dean, like his character in Step-Brothers and Talladega Nights, is an overgrown manchild who can say the stupidest, most ribald things with the utmost sincerity. He is someone who will handily steal any scene that he’s in, bringing a jolt of energy to the laid-back energy of this film. Watching him feels like you’re watching an actor whose every performance should be treasured, a comedic persona that is special and quite unique. If nothing else, Cedar Rapids should be commended for giving Reilly the room to create yet another memorable character.

Luckily Cedar Rapids has other pleasures to offer. The script, while conventional, is executed with gusto from the game cast. Miguel Arteta’s direction is unobtrusive, submerging the characters and the audience in the flat, blandly pleasant Midwest hotel in which the majority of the film takes place. Arteta’s style suggests something like a less sharply satirical Mike Judge, neatly evoking the staid locations and dull workday drudgery that pervades these characters lives without skewering it as in Judge’s Office Space or Extract. Not every film has to be a slam-dunk, life-changing experience. Sometimes a film can sneak up on you, charming you in unexpected ways and leaving you with a smile on your face and the pleasure of having seen some of today’s best comedic performers doing what they do best. By achieving this, Cedar Rapids manages to be a major success in a minor key.