Reeling Backward: "Labyrinth" (1986)

I had little interest in seeing "Labyrinth" when it came out in the summer of 1986. This despite the fact it was directed by Jim Henson in a similar vein of fantasy as "Dark Crystal," which I've always adored, and produced by George Lucas during his curiously underrated decade after "Return of the Jedi."

Adult-oriented fantasy was pretty much dead by 1986, subsumed by kiddie fare or laid low by diminishing box office returns. "Red Sonja" was a flop a year earlier, and "Labyrinth" was also a box office failure, grossing less than $13 million against a $25 million budget.

(That's about $59 million in today's dollars, which doesn't sound like a lot until you consider that year's #1 and #2 films, "Top Gun" and "Crocodile Dundee," were made for $15 million and $6 million, respectively.)

Despite being filled with puppets and explicitly aimed at children, it's a rather dark film with plenty of scary sections that likely turned off ticket-buyers. Even though Henson fretted about this and made efforts to inject more humor.

Time went on, and I still never got around to seeing it. The film's reputation grew and grew, one of the early examples of a movie being saved by home video sales and rentals. It became a particularly favorite among Millennial girls, and today even younger generations of mostly female audiences adore it.

(This probably didn't help my continuing reluctance to check it out.)

So I finally watched it along with my boys and am pleased to say I really liked "Labyrinth," bordering on love. Critics dismissed it as a visual spectacle with little in the way of story, and there's some truth to that. But the imagination is so incredibly dense, it more than makes up for the overly simplified fairy tale narrative.

To wit: a 16-year-old girl, Sarah (Jennifer Conelly), who resents her stepmother and baby half-brother, Toby, is challenged when Jareth the Goblin King steals the tyke and imprisons him in his castle. Sarah is given 13 hours to solve the incredibly complex labyrinth surrounding the castle or Toby will be turned into another goblin. Along the way Sarah encounters a menagerie of fantastical creatures, helpful and otherwise.

It's easy to see that this story is a mix of classical mythology and modern fable (notably "The Wizard of Oz"), and indeed author Maurice Sendak threatened to sue and shut down production because of the similarities to one of his books. Henson added an acknowledgement in the credits, and presumably some palms saw some grease.

The one thing I'm not completely wild about is David Bowie as the Goblin King. He wrote five songs for the movie and performed most of them, and I think at some point during the pre-production process someone had the idea of casting him, too. This despite the fact all the goblins and myriad other creatures are stunted little creatures performed by puppet masters, so why would their king be a fey, androgynous human who looks like he was the victim of the most vicious backcombing in history?

From what I've been able to learn, screenwriter (and Monty Python-er) Terry Jones and Henson repeatedly clashed and the script went through so many rewrites to the point Jones says it bears little resemblance to his work, even though he received sole credit. Henson was reportedly concerned that audiences found "Dark Crystal" too dark and unrelatable, so he wanted to cast a major pop star so they would have two primary human figures amidst all the goblins and trolls and dwarves.

It's also notable that in the story-within-a-story backbone of the tale, Sarah and the Gobin King are supposed to be in love despite their contest, and there's a beautiful dream sequence where they make moony eyes at each other from across a masked ball. I'm guessing someone realized a girl-on-felt-puppet romance wouldn't play well.

Bowie's songs are... OK, I guess, though none got me tapping a toe or humming a tune afterward. Though at least one of them, "Underground," charted decently at the time and another, "Magic Dance," was rediscovered after Bowie's 2016 death.

The most memorable is "Chilly Down," the only one Bowie does not sing himself. It's an encounter between Sarah and five red-furred creatures who refer to themselves as the Fire Gang, who can detach their heads and other body parts and play around with them. One of the members shows two long fingers, uses them to pluck out his own eyeballs, shakes them in his fist and tosses them like dice.

Unlike "Dark Crystal," the majority of the puppet work was achieved by humans wearing elaborate costumes with workable heads and limbs, with hand-held creatures as needed. The most significant is Hoggle, a dwarf with an oversized head who Sarah first meets outside the labyrinth while he's killing fairies with pest spray. He's quite arresting, with a knobby nose, age-spotted hands and huge, expressive eyes.

Brian Henson, Jim's son, provides Hoggle's voice while Shari Weiser performed inside the suit. He's irascible and peevish, but also acts as Sarah's guide and protector. Little does she know he's secretly beholden to Jareth, who shows up on a couple of occasions to browbeat Hoggle into thwarting Sarah's journey. He gives her a poisoned peach to feed her, causing her to fall into a forgetful slumber.

Jareth keeps getting Hoggle's name wrong, referring to him as "Hogwart," which makes me wonder if J.K. Rowling stole that name from the movie for her wizard's school (as she seemingly did everything else).

A couple of other, less consequential additions to Sarah's team are Ludo (voice and puppetry by Ron Hueck), a monstrously huge but gentle red-furred creature who has the power to command rocks, and Sir Didymus (voice by David Shaughnessy, puppetry by Dave Goelz), a one-eyed fox knight who rides a sheepdog as his steed. The two actually do battle when we first encounter Didymus, who is guarding a bridge in a swamp Sarah must travel through.

This place is the Bog of Eternal Stench, the place Hoggle fears more than any other, and the place Jareth keeps promising to banish him to. The bog is filled with whirlpools and geysers that continually issue forth farts and burps, and one step into the muck will leave you smelling terrible forever. Curiously, Didymus seems completely unaffected by the odor.

I was also entranced with a few other creature encounters. Sarah and Hoggle meet The Wiseman (Frank Oz and Michael Hordern), a wizened old creature who wears a large bird as a hat, and the two continually bicker, exchanging (not especially helpful) advice in exchange for donations. They also walk through a cave where the stones come to life into magic mouths uttering deep-voiced warnings to turn back, and Hoggle rudely cuts one off before allowing him to continue.

Then there's The Worm (Karen Prell and Timothy Bateson), a tiny worm in fine clothes who first gives Sarah clues how to navigate the labyrinth, pointing out some of the walls are just clever forced perspective illusions. However, he unwittingly sabotages her quest, telling her not to go left  because it's dangerous, only pointing out after she's left that it leads straight to the castle.

At several points in the story Sarah is forced to choose between two or more paths, including one where she's faced with a pair of guardians with heads protruding from above and below their shields, guarding doors leading to the path or certain doom. It's the classic conundrum of one who always tells the truth and the other who always lies.

She cleverly solves the riddle by asking one to say about the other, "Would he tell me that this door leads to the castle?" A similar encounter is with two living door-knockers. One has the ring passing through his mouth and can't speak well, while the other has it going through his ears and can't hear.

I also liked a plunge down a deep pit where she meets the Helping Hands, who break her fall and speak by using each other to form faces, including a working mouth.

Overall I actually enjoyed the more languid portions of the movie rather than the last act, where things speed up considerably and result in a lot of battles and derring-do. There's some clever stuff, like cannonballs that are actually tiny goblins inside ordnance, but it gets a little old fairly fast.

The deeper meanings of the tale are not immediately obvious, and subject to interpretation. The exact motivations of Jareth are mysterious, since all he seems to do is hang out in his castle with a bunch of goblins, occasionally breaking into song and dance. What he sees in Toby, Sarah's golden-headed baby brother, also remains a mystery other than growing his roster of minions.

The most likely answer is that the Goblin King is simply part of Sarah's psyche -- the portion of her that wants to remain a young girl who plays with dolls and makes pretend, and is scared of growing up and taking on adult responsibilities like looking after babies.

Connelly, just 14 when she was cast and dewy as a spring lily, is presented as completely innocent of sex, so having her fantasy lover be an androgynous  goblin (elf?) makes sense in that context.

I'm surprised at the lack of commentary on Sarah's acting ambitions. It's clear at the start at the story she is practicing the lines of a play, and in her room we see playbills and other newspaper clippings about a dark-haired actress that I first took to be Sarah herself. Upon second glance these are references to "Linda Williams," who must be her (presumably deceased) mother.

Jareth, who juggles crystals with visions inside them, offers Sarah to grant all her dreams if she gives up Toby. In the final scenes she is quite literally putting away childish things, including, it seems, of following in her mother's footsteps and stepping out onto the stage.

If so, this is a rather odd theme for a movie filled with flights of fancy and "hold onto your dreams" subtext.

Still, I have to say I found the experience of watching "Labyrinth" pretty magical. My boys loved it, which is surprising for a pair stubbornly devoted to all things Y-chromosome. I took care not to tell them beforehand it's a 'girls' movie' -- I knew which door to pick.

Video review: "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is the unavoidable sequel to 2015’s reboot of the genetically-recreated-dinosaurs monster mash, which made a gazillion dollars. So we’re back for another romp in the jungle, another super-duper special “boss” dinosaur and a whole lot of quips from star Chris Pratt and downer tut-tutting from other star Bryce Dallas Howard.

(Btw, isn’t it telling that in blockbuster movies featuring male and female leads, the guy is always the “fun” one?)

The setup here is that the dinos are still running rampant on the remote Isla Nublar, which originally was built as a massive amusement park. Believe it or not, an environmental movement has been launched saying they should be protected as an endangered species. Other more sensible folks simply worry about getting chomped.

Dino wrangler Owen Grady (Pratt) and operations manager Claire Dearing (Howard) are duped into helping some bad types retrieve the dinosaurs in hopes of preserving them. Instead, the plan is to auction them off as very toothy pets for the deplorable rich.

Of course, things go awry and the dinosaurs start munching on their would-be owners instead -- sort of a delish triumph for the 99%, if you think about it.

The twist is an Indoraptor, a genetically modified dinosaur that’s a mix between a velociraptor and the special boss dino from the last movie. Want to guess if the next “Jurassic World” flick will feature the spawn of this movie’s “special” dinosaur?

There are some exciting action scenes, but “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is a paint-by-numbers sequel without a lot of ambition or heart.

Bonus features are ample. The neatest feature is a series of video journals kept by Pratt during production, including one-on-ones with everyone from director J. A. Bayona to his own stunt double.

There’s also a conversation between cast and crew, a “JURASSIC Then and Now” looking at key moments in the film franchise and an “On the Set With Chris & Bryce” that explores their offscreen moments. Plus, 11 making-of documentary shorts.

Movie: 
 


Extras:

Review: "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"

Twenty-five years ago “Jurassic Park” charmed us with a sense of wonderment about our world, its mysterious history and tantalizing future, while also reminding us about the unbound limits of mankind’s capacity for avarice and power-mongering. It made our hearts swell, but also left us feeling quite small.

Now here is “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the sequel to the reboot, and the middle of a second planned trilogy. Not a one has lived up to the majesty of the original, though the previous one, starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, brought a welcome sense of humor and adventure to the proceedings.

It was fun, but forgettable -- quite literally. All I recalled was Pratt smirking and Howard incredulously clip-clopping around in high heels during the action scenes. I had to refresh myself on the plot of “Jurassic World” in preparation for the follow-up.

It’s equally forgettable, but not as much fun.

As you may (or not) recall, the theme park featuring genetically resurrected dinosaurs had been running for years after the initial disaster, until more disaster came and the entire island of Isla Nubla, off the coast of Costa Rica, was abandoned. The fearsome reptiles were contained, or so everyone thought. But now the dormant volcano is about to blow and result in a second extinction of the dinosaurs.

Despite the number of people that have been chomped, eviscerated or swallowed whole by dinos, a worldwide animal rights movement wants to save them. Leading the cause is Claire Dearing (Howard), the corporate suit who ran the old park but found her soul, due in part to a romance with Owen Grady (Pratt). He’s a dinosaur behaviorist who had formed a connection with the velociraptors, especially one named Blue.

Rushing in to save the day is Sir Lockwood (James Cromwell), a super-rich old guy who supposedly was the partner of the Richard Attenborough character from the first movie. He wants to scoop up the dinos and take them to a new island where they can live in peace, without tourists gawking or scientists prodding.

(How we got through four other films without ever hearing about Lockwood, I’ll leave up to the vagaries of script men Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow. The latter directed the last film, but turns over the chair to J. A. Bayona.)

Lockwood’s right-hand man, the soft-voiced Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), recruits Claire and Owen to return to the island to help round up and protect the creatures. But we only have to take one look at the guy leading the security force, Ken Wheatley, played by ol’ “Buffalo Bill” himself, Ted Levine, to know something’s up.

Justice Smith plays Franklin, an excitable young computer scientist, while Daniella Pineda is Zia, a puckish “paleoveterinarian” who somehow is a dinosaur doctor without ever having actually seen one. Jurassic alums BD Wong and Jeff Goldblum turn up for cameos.

Isabella Sermon plays Maisie, the prerequisite little kid who screams their head off while being chased by a raptor. I rather liked Toby Jones, wearing an elaborate blond wig and an even more elaborate drawling accent, as a broker to international a-holes who want a piece of the dinosaur pie to themselves.

The movie gives Pratt surprisingly little to do; Claire is in the driver’s seat for most of the movie, except when they need the man to show up and start flinging testosterone around.

There are some decent action scenes, including a race against a wave of lava in one of those transparent rolling globe/vehicle things, which has a wet conclusion; and an extended chase with an “Indoraptor,” the latest/greatest new-and-improved deadly dinosaur strain.

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” will make gobs of money, and we’ll get a sixth movie whether we want it or not, proving that not just fictional scientists are obsessed with cloning.

Mini-review: "Happy End"

“Hi, we’re French and rich and awful, come spend two hours with us.”

That was my cheeky micro-review of "Happy End," the French drama starring Isabelle Huppert as the matriarch of a wealthy family of horrible people. I'm not really sure what master director/writer Michael Haneke ("Amour") was going for here. There doesn't seem to be any kind of coherent theme, other than everyone in the Laurent family is somehow damaged, spiteful and/or emotionally stunted.

Huppert's character heads up the large construction company that brings them their riches. Her wayward son, the heir apparent, is a drunk who doesn't want to work. Her brother is divorced and carrying on a sadomasochism-tinged affair behind the back of his new wife, while his daughter takes dangerous steps to catch his attention, including poisoning her own mother. The father is suffering from dementia and wants to die.

Meanwhile, an accident at a construction site results in a serious injury that threatens to bring their empire down.

You don't have to like the main character in a movie, but it helps to like at least one person in the movie. Sometimes the story can even be saggy, but to use the old critic's hoe, you enjoy spending time with those characters. Here, I enjoyed not spending time with these characters.

"Happy End" is a near-torturous meditation on hate, estrangement and suicide. After watching it, I finally identified with the family.

Review: "The Man Who Knew Infinity"

The “Great Man” (or Woman) genre of cinematic biography falls into two subcategories. One is about a person of great import who is already well known to us. “The Theory of Everything,” about physicist Stephen Hawking, is a recent example of this sort.

“The Man Who Knew Everything” is the other kind: a look at a person whose accomplishments are celebrated within their field but virtually unknown to laypersons. These movies face an additional storytelling challenge, since not only do they have to satisfactorily explore that person’s life, but also justify to us why we should sit through an entire movie about them.

I feel comfortable in guessing that Srinivasa Ramanujan is not a name that falls easily from your lips. Like me, most people don’t keep lists of brilliant theoretical mathematicians memorized – let alone ones from India who died nearly a century ago.

Dev Patel (“Slumdog Millionaire”) plays the gentle soul, a self-taught man with no formal education who emerged from Madras to become a Fellow at Cambridge University in England, where he collaborated with his prickly mentor, G.H. Hardy, played by Jeremy Irons.

This movie is essentially the tale of their relationship, as it very slowly evolves from teacher/student conflict to co-equal friendship based on respect. Each man has prodigious gifts and limitations, which they intermesh in a sort of combat that transforms into a dance.

This was a wise move by writer/director Matt Brown, whose only previous credit (“Ropewalk”) was 15 years ago. The audience is obviously not going to grasp even the faintest complexities of the sort of computations these men explored – prime numbers and partitions – especially since they are dealing in “pure” math without any attempt at practical applications.

Essentially, the filmmaker has to make us feel the importance of this work without understanding it. It’s a largely successful effort, as we focus on the men and not the hieroglyphic-like scratchings (to us) they make on chalkboards and in journals.

We first meet Ramanujan in his native country, where he struggles to find employment despite his brilliance. He finally attains a position of accounting clerk for a local businessman, which at least allows him to bring his new bride, Janaki (Devika Bhise), and his mother (Arundhati Nag) to come live with him. It is an arranged marriage, and the three cautiously negotiate a web of responsibilities and resentments strewn between them.

But he yearns to publish and make his theories known to the world, believing that every mathematical idea is an expression of his patron Hindu god. Eventually his work comes to the attention of Hardy, who brings him to England.

The transition is painful. Hardy, an academic with few friendships or conviviality, makes little attempt to get to know Ramanujan on a personal level. He repeatedly chides him to complete the proofs that will prove to other, less gifted mathematicians that his theories are valid. The younger man feels chastened and constrained by not being able to let his imagination run wild, and be acknowledged.

The cultural assimilation is also difficult. A strict vegetarian and devout man, Ramanujan essentially becomes a hermit who locks himself inside his room in Charnal Lane, his health becoming increasingly worse. Meanwhile, Hardy struggles to convince his hoity-toity peers to accept the prowess of his protégé.

Both actors do a wonderful job of exploring their characters, but Irons in particular manages to bring layers of nuance that perhaps are not located in any screenplay. He gives these little bobs of the head and a distracted stare that help us feel the isolation he endures, which is perhaps not so different from that experienced by his Indian student.

It’s tough to make a crusty old academic emotionally resonant, but Irons gives Hardy a sort of homely grace.

The romantic aspect of the tale is not so effective, as Ramanujan and his bride have to carry on a relationship separated by years and thousands of miles. 

Ramanujan died at the age of 32, but his fantastical theories have been almost all been proven true and, according to the film’s postscript, are still being used today to understand the behavior of black holes. “The Man Who Knew Infinity” is an engaging portrait of a hidden genius.

Review: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"

Like its main character, George Smiley, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" plays its cards very close to its vest -- too close, in fact. The result is a nearly affectless espionage tale, a Cold War spy thriller that's chilly and boasts few thrills.

Smiley is refreshingly different from the standard cinematic spy. He's in late middle age, doesn't move in very much of a hurry, eschews guns (most of the time) and has a personality so dry, it's no surprise that his wife, Anne, has left him. Wearing huge owlish eyeglasses and an unctuous mien, Gary Oldman as Smiley resembles a tobacco store clerk more than he does James Bond.

"Tinker" is based on the 1974 novel by John le Carré, unread by me, which was turned into a seven-part BBC miniseries in 1979, with Alec Guinness playing Smiley. With its dense plot and confusing maze of characters -- I was still struggling to keep the names straight by the end -- the story might have been better suited to the episodic rhythms of television than a two-hour movie.

The film begins with the fall of the leader of British Secret Intelligence Services, known only as Control (John Hurt). He had sent one of his top agents, Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong), to Hungary to learn the identity of a double agent at the very top of their leadership. The mission goes awry, Prideaux is shot, and Control and Smiley, his right-hand man, are brought down in the ensuing scandal.

But was the theory of a mole really nonsense? Suffering through a lonely forced retirement, Smiley is given a shot at redemption when the civilian leadership appoints him to learn the truth. This proves quite a challenge, since the four men Control suspected now run "the Circus," as the members of the intelligence agency refer to themselves.

They are: Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) and Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds).

Alleline would seem to be the most likely suspect, since he openly challenged Control's authority and ended up assuming the position for himself. Alleline has had a great deal of success running "Witchcraft," a super-secret operation that has opened up a pipeline of information from inside the Soviet Union.

Smiley only has a few allies, including a promising young agent, Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch) and an old retiree. He catches a break when Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a rakish spy who first uncovered the theory of the mole and had thought to have gone rogue, turns up at his house.

I won't try to summarize the different twists and turns of the plot, mostly because it remains a blur. It's old-school cloak-and-dagger stuff, with everyone simultaneously suspicious of each other and highly on guard.

Director Tomas Alfredson, the Swede behind the moody vampire drama "Let the Right One In" (which was followed by an American remake), and screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan seem intent on crafting a film that resembles its protagonist too much.

It's one thing to have the main character be fetchingly mysterious, and quite another to have him remain a total cipher. Despite a fine performance by Oldman, George Smiley has no interior, and serves only to investigate and find things out to further the plot. Watching a movie about him is like playing chess against a computer.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "The Adventures of Tintin"

A crazy quilt of over-the-top action and cartoon wonders, "The Adventures of Tintin" is the first animated film by Steven Spielberg, and hopefully not the last.

This giddy, fast-paced thrill ride defies gravity and logic as the titular character, a boy adventurer, and his pals get into one unbelievable scrape after another.

Spielberg employs 3-D motion capture technology similar to what his contemporary, Robert Zemeckis, has used in his last three films (with results varying from the wonderful "The Polar Express" to the woeful "A Christmas Carol").

The animation is absolute terrific, hitting that sweet spot in between a near-photographic representation of reality and just enough cartoony distortion to keep things above the rim of the "uncanny valley." Peter Jackson, whose Weta studio handled the animations, is a producer and reportedly will direct the next "Tintin" movie with Spielberg producing.

(It is being released in 3-D, and quite a good rendition of the much-overused cinematic trick it is. Though Spielberg has a little too much fun pointing swords, canes and other objects at the audience for gasp moments.)

Tintin looks more or less like a normal boy, except for a swoop of red hair that makes his forelock resemble a mini mohawk. The grown-ups tend to be just a little off, with oversized eyes or noses of dimensions rarely seen outside of clown college. Even though the textures are realistic -- right down to the alcohol-induced crinkles around Captain Haddock's eyes -- we never forget we're watching a cartoon.

The movie is based on the comic books by Hergé, mostly unknown here in the States but a big deal across the pond in Europe. Screenwriting trio Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish combine three of Hergé's stories into a freewheeling yarn that makes hardly a lick of sense, but isn't meant to.

Jamie Bell voices Tintin, a self-described boy journalist who seems to lack a surname or parents. For that matter, he lives by himself in a small apartment with just his rapscallion dog Snowy, has his own money and a gun to boot.

Tintin's specialty is sleuthing out big crimes, and then writing about them. (Though, strangely, all the newspaper clips he has framed in his home are other papers about his latest triumph, rather than the ones carrying his byline.) He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of history and culture with gumption and a whole lot of luck.

The end result is something like "The Da Vinci Code" meets "Raiders of the Lost Ark" meets the Hardy Boys.

Things get started when Tintin purchases an extravagant model of a 17th century ship at an open air market. Right on his heels is Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig), a peevish professorial type who wants the ship for himself. Before long gun shots have been fired, the ship reveals a clue and it's off to the races.

Tintin's journey brings him to the ship of Haddock, a drunkard whose family traces its roots back to Sir Francis Haddock, heroic captain of the Unicorn, whose vast treasure was lost in a pirate attack by the notorious Red Rackham. Both Haddocks are voiced by Andy Serkis, and a marvelous vocal performance it is, such that one would never have guessed this was the same hidden performer behind Gollum and King Kong.

Haddock's a great character, a man of conviction who doubts his own courage. In fact, in the latter half of the movie he tends to dominate to such an extent that Tintin fades into the background.

The action set pieces are as marvelous as they are preposterous. There's one long chase through the streets and skies of the Arab town of Bagghar, with Tintin and Haddock pursuing a bird while being chased by a motorcycle, a tank and a hotel (yes, really). They fly through the air, tumble and fall, crash through windows and nobody ever suffers more damage than a few scrapes.

"The Adventures of Tintin" doesn't really add up to much more than a good time, but often it's a really, really good time.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Your Highness"

Merging the stoner comedy genre with sword-and-sorcery films seemed like a good idea on the surface, but this lame-brained flick from the "Pineapple Express" crew is more buzzkill than gut-busting funny.

On the one hand, I'm happy that we live in a world in which Danny McBride can become a movie star. Let's face it, with his mullet coif, cheeseburger mustache and beer gut, he looks like a guy who drives a Camaro IROC-Z to his job at the sewer treatment plant than somebody who makes movies with people who rule at the Oscars.

But comedy is the ultimate meritocracy, and McBride is funny. Unfortunately, "Your Highness" isn't.

He plays Thadeous, a prince who'd rather lay around the castle smoking "glorious herbs" than go out questing like his older brother, Fabious (James Franco). When his brother's new bride (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux), Thadeous agrees to tag along.

When the greatest warrior in the land turns out to be a comely lass (Natalie Portman), things look up for awhile. But there are still despotic woodland kings and amorous minotaurs to overcome.

"Your Highness" is a medieval low point -- a great idea, badly botched.

Details on video extras were still sketchy at press time, but here's what I have gathered. Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions include an unrated extended version of the film, a making-of documentary, commentary track with Director David Gordon Green, McBride, Franco and Theroux, deleted/alternate scenes and a gag reel.

The Blu-ray also includes "Perverted Visions," an extended version of the Great Wise Wizard sequence, more extended scenes and a montage of alternative jokes from various scenes.

Movie: 1.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Video review: "The Rite"

"The Rite" is pretty much a one-trick pony: What if the exorcist became possessed himself?

Nearly 40 years after Linda Blair shocked audiences with some demonic neck-twisting and pea soup spewing, we've seen virtually every iteration of the exorcism routine. "The Rite," based on a nonfiction book by Matt Baglio, aims to drag exorcism into the 21st century by basing itself on real cases of demonic possession chronicled by the Catholic church.

Except... it's not real, really. The character Baglio used as his main character was a middle-aged priest, not a handsome young seminary student (Colin O'Donoghue) doubting his faith. And his mentor in the ways of exorcism (Anthony Hopkins) did not fall victim to possession himself.

So, "The Rite" is a mix of real-world religious lore and Hollywood hooey. I wouldn't mind the sham, except the end result is generally not very compelling, except for some nice scenery-chewing by Hopkins in the latter section where his eyes change color and his skin goes blotchy and cracked (well, more so).

This is a PG-13 horror film -- a contradiction in terms to purists like myself -- so the violence and taunting of religious mores never goes too far over the edge. It's Blasphemy Lite.

Extra features are nothing special. If you buy the DVD version, all you'll get are a handful of deleted/extended scenes totaling about 13 minutes, none of which is terribly consequential.

If you upgrade to the DVD/Blu-ray combo pack, you'll get a few more goodies, including an alternate ending with a creepier flavor, and a digital copy of the film.

A nearly 7-minute making-of featurette is interesting insofar as it introduces the real priest Baglio based his book on, and demonstrates how far afield the movie travels from it. In fact, the journalist character representing Baglio himself is changed to a hot Italian woman for O'Donoghue to make moony eyes at.

Movie: 1.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "Your Highness"

The sword-and-sorcery genre isn't exactly going gangbusters. After a brief heyday of schlocky movies in the early 1980s and a high point with the "Lord of the Ring" trilogy, things have been pretty sketchy for fantasy films. But that hasn't stopped the "Pineapple Express" crew from unnecessarily spoofing them.

Like "Pineapple," a modern ode to toking weed from 2008, "Your Highness" isn't nearly as funny as it seems to think it is. Danny McBride and James Franco play princely brothers on a quest to stop an evil warlock from bringing about end times, and they get a helping hand from Natalie Portman as a female warrior who kicks butt, and then shows hers.

The running joke is that it's a Dungeons & Dragons kind of world, but everyone acts and speaks like modern hipster doofuses. Thus McBride is a portly lay-about who'd rather smoke "glorious herbs" than go questing, and tosses the f-word about a lot more liberally than we're used to hearing in sword-and-sandals flicks.

McBride, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ben Best, also ladles on a generous helping of raunch -- including a wicked woodland king with a coterie of nude female retainers, and a minotaur who's a lot more, um, amorous than the mythical beast of yore. (How they got the latter past the censors, even with computer-generated imagery, boggles the mind.)

Thadeous (McBride) is the envious brother of Fabious (Franco), heir to the throne and veteran of many adventures. Having just returned from his latest one, Fabious reveals the maiden he rescued, Belladonna. She's played by Zooey Deschanel, in a role that asks her only to sing a short song and act loopy, and wastes her considerable talents.

Leezar (Justin Theroux), the aforementioned evil wizard, kidnaps Belladonna so he can pluck her virginity at the exact moment of a twin lunar eclipse, thus giving rise to a dragon only he can control, or something.
Fabious insists that his younger brother accompany him on this most perilous quest, which Thadeous does only reluctantly, bringing along his nebbishy manservant Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) to get in the way of any arrows or blades coming his way.

During their journeys they encounter Isabel (Portman), perhaps the greatest fighter in the land, who saves their bacon and then rebuffs the piggish advances of Thadeous. After much consternation and fisticuffs, they eventually band together to defeat Leezar.

The action scenes are staged clumsily and without any flair, although some of the special effects scenes are cool to look at.

I will admit to responding to four or five good jokes in "Your Highness," mostly one-offs and throwaway lines that tickle the funny bone fleetingly, and then are gone. When director David Gordon Green, his cast and crew are trying to build a sustained comedic mood, though, the film goes flat.

What a buzzkill.

1.5 stars out of four