Your Highness :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews

"Your Highness" (R, 102 minutes). A juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs and four-letter words. A promising cast (James Franco, Natalie Portman, Danny McBride, Zooey Deschanel) in one of the worst films of the year, a witless farce set in medieval times and featuring a curious obsessions with adding obscenities to every sentence. The screenplay by McBride is more suitable for a campfire skit by dirty-minded 11-year-olds on the closing night of summer camp. One star.

Your Highness :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews

I had such hopes for this movie, based on a story by Ursula Le Guin, who also consulted on the movie. Unfortunately, this movie is gawd-awful terrible. By far, the worst aspect of the movie is its grating, pretentious soundtrack, oh-so modern, like a synthesizer falling down an interminable flight of stairs, without the satisfaction of the final destruction. I can only think of one soundtrack I hate more and, mercifully, I’ve forgotten the name of that awful flick. Hate, hate, hate this soundtrack. However, if you could strip away the soundtrack, that would not be worth the effort, for this film loses its way, loses its focus, loses its purpose. There’s something about playing god, Man’s purpose, and destroying the world. Not even the Zen-spouting, antique-selling (Junque) turtle-bug aliens could save the twisted story. The worst episodes of the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, and the original Star-Trek were better – even if you mashed those all together.

The dated-ness of a movie filmed in 1980 about the “near future” was interesting at times – especially, all the giant computers – but I may have been grasping at anything. The movie features Bruce Davison, more-recently the villainous Senator Kelly in X-Men. Also featured is Kevin Conway, far better as the Voice of the revived Outer Limits – great voice, even through the agony of the soundtrack.

This movie was the first-ever commissioned by PBS. The Republican National Committee should screen it all over the country; I’m ready to cut funding for PBS for investing my penny in this abomination.

See the Butterfly Effect. See Franklyn. If there is only a choice between Donnie Darko and this, see Donnie Darko. If you loved Donnie Darko and hated the Butterfly Effect, this movie is for you.

The Lathe of Heaven (TV 1980) – IMDb

I saw Serenity in the theater when it first came out (2005) and again just now on Roku. Like everyone who saw the TV series Firefly, I loved Joss Whedon’s creation, a unique vision of the final frontier. Everyone, that is, but the astonishing idiots in charge of Fox programming. A pox on their houses. I highly recommend Firefly. Serenity, on the other hand, is for true fans: A reunion with old friends. Of course, the movie does add to the myth and provides one of the great anti-heroes in The Operative, played brilliantly by Chiwetel Ejiofor (be sure to see him in Kinky Boots – talk about versatile). Ultimately, Serenity is too violent for my tastes, but love of the franchise boosts my rating.

Whoa. Add this to the queue after The Butterfly Effect (which it shares much with) and Franklyn. I almost turned this off in the first half hour, but I think it was worth sticking with. Quite a cast of supporting players.

There are a few big things that happen in the movie that don’t seem relevant to the main direction of the film. At least one of those things leaves the world worse-off if undone, although that may be part of the point / problem with fixing things.

Both Darko and The Butterfly Effect surprise me in how far their protagonists are willing to go to fix things – to save their love interests, actually. It’s a strange kind of unsung heroism – no one will know the sacrifice. Which makes me think of re-reading A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I wish I could recommend this movie, at least to die hard Joseph Gordon-Levitt fans (looking towards MR, and AE, if I remember correctly), but I can’t, really. There are a lot of interesting things about this movie, but not so much the movie itself. Take any of the film noir movies involving tough guys and shady dames and update the time to current day high school. Let JGL play the Bogey role. Sounds more interesting that it turns out – not that it turns out bad, this is no stinker. The dialog is amazingly true to its inspiration / conceit. I don’t think there was one obscenity. The violence involves serious beatings / fights and one too-well-done execution. Still, Lucas Haas as the kingpin – excellent – as inspired as Sidney Greenstreet. There were a few moments where the teen underworld brushed the middle-class suburban context, where mom dotes over a visiting boy or a thug talks about a book, that make me think they played it too straight; a little more of that (“There’s the Boss, and his mom.”) might have made this too camp, but more enjoyable.

Brick (2005) – IMDb