Your Highness.

A raunchy fantasy romp brought to you by the same chaps who made Pineapple Express. It's done pretty poorly at the box office. I can understand why. It has very little appeal to your average viewer.. not nearly as much nudity as the trailers would have you believe and generally it requires that the audience be well versed in 80's fantasy films, D&D and other sorts of Fantasy oriented activities in order to truly get anything out of the movie.

It felt a hell of a lot like the sorts of things my friends would devolve a D&D game into. Wizards shooting colour spray out of their backsides. Barbarians blundering into boobytraps and having to re-roll 3-4 times a night. Jokes about copulating with dwarves or farm animals.. All of that sort of stuff.. it's all in this movie. Instead of getting high and watching Ator the Mighty, this is like getting Ator the Mighty high and then watching while completely sober.

Like Pineapple express the marketing is.. confused.. and confusing. They try to make it have as much mass market appeal as possible but its clearly not working.

The cast is, generally made up of quite good actors and actresses.. James Franco, Natalie Portman and Damien Lewis are all people I usually think of as being 'good' actors.. Danny Mcbride however you either love or hate, and having him star in the film was perhaps a mistake.. It's one thing to have him as a character in the movie.. but to be the star of the movie didn't really work... but he wrote it.. so he clearly loved it. At points in the film it was almost as if the character succeeded or failed based solely on Danny McBride throwing some saving throws behind his DM screen. He also wasn't lying when he likened it to serious movies like Dragonslayer and Krull.. It's simply a really really really raunchy Krull.

It didn't have the sex and violence of programs like Spartacus, but wasn't family friendly like a lot of those 80's movies were by any stretch of the imagination. Most of the jokes relied on the audience being aware of what was being lampooned. The film was rife with shots copied from Conan the Barbarian and others. But at the same time it didn't really come across as a spoof. It's more of just a really really screwy Fantasy world. Xanth on Acid.

So my guess is, if you are reading my review of it.. you will get a lot more out of it than if you are just some one who is reading a review of it on Yahoo. Don't trust the reviews from "normal" sources on this one.. if you like those 80's movies (some like Ator and Deathstalker are so bad they hurt to watch) You will find this lovable near Pastiche of those sorts of films quite enjoyable.