Having seen a trailer for Your Highness a few months ago my interest was piqued, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a spoof that was actually a spoof. Those Scary/Date/Superhero/Disaster Movie films may be pretend to be spoofs but they’re really nothing more than a collection of references to other movies, not all of which even had been part of the genre they’re supposed to be spoofing. So it seemed to me that the time was right for a good old fashioned spoof. Well having seen Your Highness I’m not sure it was that.

The film begins, as with any good fantasy film, a prologue explaining the world in which the film is set. There is an evil sorcerer who is trying to bring about the end of the world, once every 100 years an eclipse happens between the 2 moons which will some how give him power to destroy the world and he needs to sacrifice a virgin. Just at the right moment a hero appears and saves the virgin and thwarts sorcerer, and he says in a 100 years someone else will rise to take his place and the virgin hopes that there will be a hero who can thwart him then as this one has now. Then, “just about 100 years later” as a caption tells us, we meet Prince Thadeous, about to be hanged, by the dwarf king for sleeping with his Queen. When they try to hang him it turns out the gallows are set for dwarfs and too low, so Thadeous survives and makes his escape with his servant, Courtney, in tow.

Upon returning home he is reprimanded by his father, the king, for botching his job of negotiating a truce with the Dwarf King and then feels humilated when his brother, Prince Fabious, returns from his quest not only successful but with a beautiful maiden whom he wishes to marry. Fabious asks Thadeous to be his best man at the wedding but after a fit of pique when he hears Fabious’s knights belittling him he runs off to get wasted on his own. And while the wedding must go on without him the evil sorcerer Leezar shows up and steels Fabious’s bride, and upon returning the King tells Thadeous that he must accompany his brother on a quest to save his bride or be banished from the kingdom.

So this all sounds surprisingly like an actual plot, which isn’t really something we’ve had a lot of in spoofs of late, which as I said actually had me interested in this film since I heard about it. Though to be honest if this didn’t have actual Hollywood stars and a comedy element to it you could mistake it for a cheap Syfy Original/Asylum style B movie. The humour is mostly crude and stoner humour, which I admit some of it did make me laugh. Danny McBride, in the lead role as Thadeous, is someone who I often find to be hit or miss, he often goes over the top, and basically plays the same role in every film, but that’s how it generally goes with these sorts of films so I could live with that. James Franco is someone who has some real acting skill, though it’s not often on display, Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel are usually good too, and with secondary characters being played by Toby Jones and Charles Dance I thought it’d be fairly decent. Well I was wrong. It’s not terrible, it does have a few laughs and the actors are hamming it up but I kinda feel that if it wasn’t for the crowd in the cinema laughing it up it wouldn’t have felt nearly as funny.

Most of the jokes seem to consist of either Thadeous having a modern attitude and swearing or things like the “Old Wise Wizard” who is a pervert and wants wanking off for his magic to work. Which possibly would have been funnier had I been drunk, or still a teenager. So overall I’d say it’s a fairly mediocre film, but given the right mindset, level of intoxication or immaturity this film may work for you.