"Your Highness" Deserves No Bow or Curtsy

Your Highness is David Gordon Green's followup to Pineapple Express, with both films clearly being advertised as stoner comedies.  Pineapple Express, released in 2008, proclaimed itself as a movie about pot and its side effects, which can get you into trouble, but mainly bring about hilarious results.  Your Highness, on the other hand, tries to make the story seem just as funny with a few weed smoking scenes incorporated, but it falls short to its predecessor.
Danny McBride, an actor who can normally hold his own on the HBO series Eastbound & Down, as well as other supporting roles, does not have such an impact in the film that he co-wrote with Ben Best.  The script is polluted with sex jokes, and the F bomb in general dropping every few seconds, gearing towards laughter from the pre-pubescent audience, but not the mature viewers who actually gained access to the theater.
James Franco and Natalie Portman also star, with the former following up from his Academy Award nominated role in 127 Hours, and the latter co-starring in her second film since her Oscar winning role in the phenomenal motion picture Black Swan.  Franco has proven his talent in films such as the eight time Academy Award nominated movie Milk, all three Spider-Man films, and even director Green's previous film Pineapple Express, for which Franco earned a Golden Globe nomination.  In Your Highness, however, Franco tries to be as unexpectedly funny, but tends to drop his Medieval-type accent, and only deliver hit and miss jokes from McBride's faulty script.
Portman, who has already suffered from the post-Oscar curse in No Strings Attached, pleases the audience with close-ups of her behind and her overall role as a craved-after sexual entity, providing a decent comedic performance.  Her occasional jokes, however, are only to show the weakness of McBride's "heroic" character, although they eventually become a love interest that is obviously unlikely to anyone who can see the screen.
The film has its flaws, with many of its comedic attempts trying to poke fun at films such as Labyrinth, starring David Bowie, and Clash of the Titans, but it is not as successful as the numerous spoofs preceding it such as Simon Pegg's roles in both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  Unlike the overly ridiculous mocking style of the Scary Movie franchise, Your Highness has a more unique style to it, but unless you're as baked as Danny McBride's character, you probably won't find the appeal of this movie.  Your Highness has its moments, but unless you toke up that's all this movie will be; a series of somewhat comical moments, and no sequence of laugh out loud scenes, no matter how much time you spend smoking the ganja and chasing after sheep.