'Your Highness' is a royal flop

This Medieval comedy is vulgar, but not funny..

Once a darling of critics, David Gordon Green (George Washington and All the Real Girls) lately has been dabbling in low-brow comedy, first in 2008's Pineapple Express and now with Your Highness. * Green manages to take two of last year's prominent Oscar names -- James Franco (nominee) and Natalie Portman (winner) on a downward spiraling ride. * Tasteless and often downright ugly, Your Highness attempts to spoof the cliches of the sword-and-sorcery genre. * Danny McBride, who along with Franco appeared in Pineapple Express, plays a prince immersed in a sibling rivalry with his older brother Fabious (Franco). The brothers embark on a quest to save Fabious' finacee (Zooey Deschanel). * Deschanel's Belladonna has fallen into the clutches of the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux). The brothers ultimately find Belladonna, but discover few laughs as the script pours on the F-word, something you can do at home without having to purchase a ticket. * Is it me or is there some kind of rule that after winning an Oscar, an actor must always appear in a bad movie? Oh well, at least Portman looks good. * The movie's comic high point involves a severed penis. Does that tell you enough? No? Well, the presence of special effects makes the movie seem as overproduced as it is witless.* By the end, I was hoping that Your Highness wouldn't raise its sword in in triumph, but would fall on it instead.