‘Your Highness’ low on laughs

The fantasy comedy "Your Highness" is less a movie and more medieval scenery filled with sexual innuendo and F-bombs that don't land.

With a budget of $50 million and an opening-weekend gross of just $9.5 million, "Your Highness" looks destined to flop financially as well as creatively.

A film starring James Franco and Danny McBride filled with vulgarity, nudity and ad-libbing sounds great on the surface. In fact, it sounds exactly like "Pineapple Express" minus Seth Rogen, which is fitting since it features the same director and several of the same actors.

"Your Highness" also features Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel, neither of whom participates in the aforementioned nudity.

"Pineapple Express" found a common ground between plot and comedy, often using one to accentuate the other. "Your Highness" fails to find a balance alternating between following the plot and committing to the comedy, and in the end both suffer.

The lead actor also co-wrote the script in both movies, which seems to be the key difference between them. Rogen is a more polished writer. He wrote "Superbad" and was a featured writer for TV shows such as "Da Ali G Show" and "Undeclared" before penning "Pineapple Express." McBride only had "The Foot Fist Way" and 13 episodes of the HBO series "Eastbound & Down" under his belt before "Your Highness."

McBride is a comedic actor on the verge becoming a star after quality supporting roles in "Hot Rod," "Tropic Thunder" and "Land of the Lost." This could have been the role to put him over the top, but instead it knocked him down a peg. The entire scope of his acting career may depend on "30 Minutes or Less," an adventure comedy coming in August co-starring Jesse Eisenberg.

McBride and Franco star as princes and brothers Thadeous and Fabious respectively. Fabious is the older brother, the hero of the kingdom and the heir to the throne. Thadeous is a lazy and spoiled party animal, much like a medieval Billy Madison.

After the evil sorcerer Leezar kidnaps Fabious' bride-to-be at their wedding, he and Thadeous embark on a quest to rescue Belladonna (Deschanel). Along the way they encounter a warrior named Isabel (Portman) who is hell-bent on revenge against Leezar, among others.

The numerous action sequences are mildly entertaining, but the special effects, especially ones involving sorcery, look like they belong in a movie on the Syfy channel.

According to director David Gordon Green, the film's dialogue was mostly unscripted with only a rough outline for a script. This cast is capable of doing great things when given the freedom to adlib, but they need to be given something to build on. They aren't capable of creating comedy from scratch.

It's nice to see Portman and Franco are not taking themselves too seriously after their recent Oscar success. They do what they can with the material provided, but the material is unsalvageable.

McBride will recover and have a solid comedic acting career, but he needs to put his dreams of screen writing on the back burner.