Danny McBride names his most unfairly treated movie: “It was ahead of its time!”
In a world as crowded and competitive as comedy, Danny McBride stands out, with his work, particularly alongside director David Gordon Green and writer Jody Hill, combining eccentric characters with high-concept scenarios and naturalistic dialogue.
He’s worked with some of the biggest names in show business and has been at the top of his game for years, yet he’s not gotten the recognition many people believe he deserves.
McBride’s work has long been considered underrated by his peers, and despite years of producing groundbreaking comedic television, his only Emmy nomination came in 2024, and it was for ‘Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series’ of all things. Even his rare forays into dramatic work haven’t been received all that well. Is anybody really clamouring to see Alien: Covenant again, or the rebooted Halloween franchise?
Speaking to The Independent, the man behind Kenny Powers spoke about being overlooked, claiming that critics were harsher towards funny films that they didn’t personally understand. When a critic doesn’t like a comedy, he asserted, they take it as a personal affront.
“They’re almost mad that they don’t get the joke,” he explained, “I feel like they’re just more vicious, whereas when they don’t like a dramatic movie, I feel like they don’t have their knives out as much. Doing something like Alien, whether people liked it or not, they always seemed engaged with the filmmaking or took it more seriously. But I feel like we really got boned on Your Highness. We made an R-rated movie for 13-year-olds. It was ahead of its time!”
McBride stars alongside James Franco and Natalie Portman in this fantasy comedy, with the two men playing two princes, the latter of whom is heroic and dashing, while the former is a complete waste of space. When a beautiful princess is kidnapped, it’s up to the brothers to get her back, so naturally, along the way, they get into various scrapes, often involving bodily fluids, genitalia, and every naughty word under the sun.
Not only did critics despise the movie, which found Roger Ebert describing it scathingly as “a perplexing collapse of judgment”, but it also flopped at the box office. Despite being full of stars and coming hot off the heels of Pineapple Express, people couldn’t be convinced to give it a shot.
The core issue with the film wasn’t necessarily that it was lowbrow, but that was all it was, with very little variation in Your Highness’ humour and everything revolving around the same juvenile concepts. Even if you are a fan of toilet humour, you don’t really want to sit through over 100 minutes of it with no breaks, making McBride’s claim that the film was “ahead of its time” an interesting one. There have been plenty of gross-out comedies in the years since, but most of them have received similar treatment from critics.
Whether you agree with McBride’s statement or just think he’s butt-hurt at getting some bad reviews, he wasn’t wrong when he said that critics give comedies a hard time in general, for it’s much easier to be taken serious when you don’t try to make people laugh, even though comedy has been a core part of cinema since the very beginning.
