The comedy “calamity” that made Roger Ebert weep for cinema: “Why did they do it?”
It’s always a kick in the teeth when you watch a movie either made by your favourite director or starring your favourite actor, and in some rare unfortunate cases, both, and it’s shite. They were the chosen ones, bastions of cinematic excellence, and here they are, churning out a cinematic dumpster fire. It doesn’t happen too often, but it did happen to Roger Ebert once, and he was aghast.
While it sounds a little biased for someone who gets paid to criticise films to pin their hopes on one filmmaker as having the potential to become a modern great, Ebert’s hopes were dashed anyway. He’d awarded the rising auteur’s first three features a maximum four-star rating, which meant he was as keen as anyone to see what they did next.
By his own admission, he didn’t see the fourth, but he heard it was pretty good. As for the fifth, he appreciated what it was. Unfortunately, when David Gordon Green opted to make an expensive period comedy his sixth directorial port of call, Your Highness left Ebert questioning why such a talented and promising filmmaker would make something so irredeemably bad.
“What calamity has befallen him? He carried my hopes,” he opined in a one-star assessment of the box office bust. “Assume for the sake of argument that David thought the time had come for him to direct a farce. Fair enough. But why this screenplay? What did they think would be funny?”
Describing the film as a “perplexing collapse of judgment,” Ebert didn’t spare the cast from his ire. He was entitled to, seeing as comedy fixtures James Franco and Danny McBride were joined by genuinely talented actors like Natalie Portman, Damian Lewis, and Charles Dance, making him wonder what the hell convinced them to sign on for a movie so egregiously terrible.
“Why did they do it?” he asked. “Maybe because David Gordon Green’s previous film was the nice stoner comedy Pineapple Express and they figured he could do it again?” He never got his answer, though, leaving him to lament how a director he had pegged for the top had reduced himself to “relentless obscenity,” “lots of boobs,” and female characters who exist only as “masturbatory fantasies.”
Still, he did subject himself to Your Highness‘ entire 102-minute runtime, even if he really shouldn’t have bothered. Heading into the film, Ebert was convinced that Green was poised to become a leading light among a new generation of behind-the-camera talents who started small and worked their way up the ladder, but by the time the credits rolled, he was ready to weep for cinema after discovering that a shoddy premise and a sizeable enough budget are enough to turn anyone’s head.
“Oh, what a sad movie this is,” he concluded. “David Gordon Green has made great films. He should remind himself of that.” He’s made 11 movies since then, and it’s a shame Ebert isn’t around to take solace from the fact that he hasn’t made anything worse in the years since. Yet.
