Your Highness 2011

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A radioactive turd disguised as a sword-and-sorcery comedy. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: The rest of the action elicited only stray chortles, a raised eyebrow, or rolled eyes. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: By and large, "Your Highness" is a Cheech and Chong movie in period drag, so it's no wonder it goes up in smoke. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: David Gordon Green's hard-R comedy is an ambler's delight, never content to race so much as to linger on its crude yet benign misadventures. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: A cunning weave of low and high, regal and smutty, splendiferous and splattery. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: This movie is so sophomoric, it makes Pineapple Express, and even Harold and Kumar, look like sophisticated wit. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The whole thing plays like one of those supposedly hilarious ideas hatched on a late night - though generally, in the light of day, such ideas are quickly abandoned. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: There's nothing inherently wrong with prizing entertainment over art, but what happens when the big, dumb popcorn fare isn't even fun? Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: With this cast, as well as director David Gordon Green on board, you expect a lot more than the occasional chuckle. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Unwatchable -- and, thanks to its high-decibel action sequences, barely listenable -- this misbegotten medieval fantasy/stoner comedy marks a new low for David Gordon Green, once ranked among the most promising young filmmakers in America. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: The chief problem with Your Highness is its lack of imagination -- its misuse and overuse of language and visual riffs that are only marginally amusing at best. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Sword and sorcery movies often resemble parodies of themselves even when they are intended to be taken seriously. And then there are genre spoofs like Your Highness that are meant to be funny and leave you stone-faced. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This film looks like it was a lot more fun to make than it is to watch. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: When the jokes sputter and the kingdom of Your Highness is littered with the joint carnage of broad gags, bloody violence, and dorky wizard magic, where, oh where, can a loyal subject look for fun? Read more

David Germain, Associated Press: Co-writer McBride and his collaborators apparently set out on a quest to ram as much coarse language and as many adolescent sexual gags into a movie as possible, maybe to cover the fact that the movie doesn't contain much else. Read more

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: Falls instead into a deep chasm of such comic lowness after less than five minutes that it's unable to extricate itself. Things get so bad you half expect a cameo by Nicolas Cage. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: [Green] has an easy touch when it comes to comedy, which means you can almost sense those moments when the actors give themselves over to the silliness. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The film will probably play a lot better in dorm rooms with plenty of beer kegs and bongs on hand, but in the confines of a movie theater, it's deadly - the sort of bad comedy Mel Brooks made late in his career, until he finally smartened up and quit. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Dudes, we get it. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: None of this is very funny, and most of it is pretty ugly - the last half-hour or so is a paroxysm of bad special effects, amputated limbs and a severed sexual organ. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Franco truly saves the day. His hilarious deadpan in the midst of utter insanity turns a bawdy goof into a most welcome lark indeed. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: When somebody says, "The quest sucks," I was inclined to agree. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: An inventory of the preoccupations of 13-year-old boys. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Considering the talent involved on both sides of the camera, audiences may be expecting more - a lot more. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Lots of balls. Also lots of penis jokes. But too loud and obvious. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The screenplay by Danny McBride is so hopeless, he didn't even write himself a good role, and he plays the lead. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The comic mojo of Danny McBride can be a thing of fucked-up beauty. So I was stoked that McBride signed on as star and co-writer of Your Highness. But the air goes out of that balloon pretty damn quick. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: For a few hours after having seen "Your Highness," I considered the possibility that it was the worst movie ever made. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: It is a pox on comedy. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Basically, the script, from the title on down, feels like something sketched out on rolling papers. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: I feel a kind of head-swiveling awe in Your Highness's concentration of aimless inanity, in the purity of its devotion to its own louche principles. Read more

Tom Huddleston, Time Out: With McBride and Franco trying on knowingly bad Brit accents and the entire cast clearly having a whale of a time, the impression is of the world's daftest, priciest, least self-serious end-of-the-pier panto. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: That skunky smell emanating from "Your Highness" ain't pot; it's the stink of miscalculation that surrounds an inside joke gone awry. Read more

Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: The movie's improvisatory recklessness often relies on stock, fallback comedy: scenes lazily punchlined on four-letter words, pot slang, and gay jokes only offensive in their unoriginality. Read more

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post: While the chemistry between characters is impressive and the comic delivery spot-on, the jokes feel unoriginal. Read more