Movie Review: Halloween (2018)

Halloween **** / *****

Directed by: David Gordon Green.

Written by: David Gordon Green & Danny McBride & Jeff Fradley based on characters created by John Carpenter & Debra Hill.

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode), Judy Greer (Karen), Andi Matichak (Allyson), James Jude Courtney (The Shape), Nick Castle (The Shape), Haluk Bilginer (Dr. Sartain), Will Patton (Officer Hawkins), Rhian Rees (Dana Haines), Jefferson Hall (Aaron Korey), Toby Huss (Ray), Virginia Gardner (Vicky), Dylan Arnold (Cameron Elam), Miles Robbins (Dave), Drew Scheid (Oscar), Jibrail Nantambu (Julian), P.J. Soles (Teacher).

 

There have now been 11 Halloween films over the last 40 years – 10 of them featuring Michael Myers – and it continues to be the best horror franchise of its type. This has been a series that has tried, with varying degrees of success, to reinvent itself over and over again throughout its run – from the strange third installment, which omitted Myers altogether, to H20 which brought the franchise into the Scream era, to the two Rob Zombie movies, in which he attempted to make two movies about trauma – the first, about Michael’s trauma, and the second about Laurie’s. You may not like all of these attempts, but you have to admire the franchise for attempting them – especially since its closest contemporaries – Friday the 13^th and A Nightmare on Elm Street – mainly seem content to keep repeating themselves over and over again (even if, Jason goes to space, he’s still Jason). This newest version, which jettisons everything in the mythology that didn’t come from the 1978 original – gets exactly what has set this franchise apart from the others – mainly, “final girl” Laurie Strode herself – the survivor of the original massacre, who has become as iconic a character as the killer himself – something completely unheard of elsewhere in the genre. The movie takes seriously the trauma that Laurie suffered that night 40 years ago, and how it has affected her entire life. It is also just a really, really entertaining horror movie. So while it still doesn’t come close to the level of perfection the 1978 version is, it’s about as good of a sequel as anyone could expect 40 years later.

 

The premise of the new film is that ever since that night 40 years ago, Myers has been institutionalized, where once again he doesn’t say anything or do anything – he simply sits and bides his time, waiting for his chance to escape and kill again (the movie doesn’t explain how he got captured, since of course the finale of the original is him getting away – but no matter). Once again, Myers is due to be transferred – this time to a maximum security prison, on October 30^th again (they should have at least delayed it until November 1^st). And of course, once again the transfer goes wrong – and Michael comes back to Haddonfield – determined to finish what he started all those years ago.

 

The movie introduces us to a pair of podcasters as a way to give us the information we need – where Michael has been, and what happened to Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in the years since. She has essentially become a survivalist, living in her remote home, which she has fortified and booby trapped and filled with weapons. Her paranoia has cost her two marriages – and her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer) who she lost custody of when she as 12, and the relationship is still strained. Now, Karen has a daughter herself – Allyson (Andi Matichak) – who is, of course, the same age Laurie was 40 years ago. This gives the movie a chance to give us a lot more teens lined up for slaughter (also, thankfully, the film seems to know the podcasters are kind of annoying – and dispatches them when they are no longer needed). The world’s worst psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis is of course long dead, but he has been replaced by his protégé, Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) – and I’ll leave it to you to discover if he’s as bad at his job as Loomis clearly was.

 

The director this time is David Gordon Green – who isn’t the first name you’d think of to do a horror movie. His days as one of the most promising indie filmmakers in the world (George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow, Snow Angels) is far back in the past – and although he has become somewhat of a journeyman director in the years since, he knows how to make a movie – and this is one of his best. While the film is more violent – with a higher body count, and more blood – than Carpenter’s original film, for the most part he follows Carpenter’s lead in that the violence isn’t as brutal as you may expect it to be – and for the most part, he allows the victims to be people first, before they are killed. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising since Danny McBride is one of the screenwriters, but the film is also quite funny at times – best of all is a little kid named Julian, one of my favorite additions.

 

Green and company’s reverence for the original film is evident throughout – there are a lot of references to the original film – in dialogue, in visual gags and setups, etc. – but this isn’t here just as fan service. It works here, and Green and company use them to upend our expectations. And the filmmakers also are smart enough to know where the emotional core of this film will be – in the three generations of Strode women, all of whom are smart, strong and resourceful – even as their family bond has been tested and strained over the years (or perhaps because of it). By now, Curtis could do this role in her sleep – but she doesn’t. She brings real pathos to her role here – as we see the price of the trauma her – and how it has been passed down to future generations.

 

The one thing that I think could have made this Halloween even better is had it been a little bit scarier. The film is fun and entertaining, emotionally resonant, and tense – and yet, I don’t know if I ever felt the true, bone deep terror, that the best horror movies make you feel – including the original, that still does it to me, despite the fact that I’ve seen it about 10 times now. But the movie does pretty much every other thing right, so I guess we cannot have it all.

Movie Review: Stronger

Stronger **** / *****

Directed by: David Gordon Green.

Written by: John Pollono based on the book by Jeff Bauman and Bret Witter.

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal (Jeff Bauman), Tatiana Maslany (Erin Hurley), Miranda Richardson (Patty Bauman), Richard Lane Jr. (Sully), Nate Richman (Big D), Lenny Clarke (Uncle Bob), Patricia O'Neil (Aunt Jenn), Clancy Brown (Big Jeff), Kate Fitzgerald (Aunt Karen), Danny McCarthy (Kevin), Frankie Shaw (Gail Hurley), Carlos Sanz (Carlos).

 

Movies like Stronger – that are based on real world tragedies – are difficult to pull off. They often dwell in the details of the day in question, risking rubbernecking at tragedy, before ending with some sort of phony uplift that ignores all the lasting pain the event has caused. The previews for Stronger – based on the true life story of Jeff Bauman, a young man who lost both his legs below the knee in the Boston Marathon Bombing – make it look like one of those phony inspirational movies that aim to make us all feel great again. The film itself though isn’t that – at least not quite. This is a film that dwells on that middle ground – the long, hard road between the tragedy and uplifting ending – a period when it really doesn’t seem like everything is okay – and may never be okay again.

 

As Bauman – the young, cocky Boston native who works at Costco as a chicken cook, Jake Gyllenhaal adds another impressive performance to a growing list of strong work. In the opening scenes – before the blasts – he almost seems like a background player in Good Will Hunting come to life, but in a mostly charming way. His on-again, off-again girlfriend Erin (Tatiana Maslany) is off-again – she’s frustrated that he doesn’t seem to want to grow up or show up – anywhere – but he assures her – when she crosses the finish line at the Marathon, he’ll be there – with a big, homemade sign for her and everything. We know how that turns out.

 

In the aftermath of the bombing, Bauman becomes a symbol for Boston Strong – they want him on talk shows, they want him at Bruins and Red Sox games – everyone recognizes him, and everyone thinks he’s a hero. But Jeff doesn’t think that way – he doesn’t know what is heroic about having his legs blown off. When someone tells him that he “showed the terrorists that they can’t win” – he responds “From where I’m sitting, it looks like they at least got on the scoreboard”. He drinks more, he slacks off on his rehab assignments – his relationship with Erin – which is now on-again – becomes strained. He is enabled by his family – especially his mother, Patty (Miranda Richardson) – who drinks a lot herself, and just wants everyone to see how great and strong her son is. He certainly doesn’t feel heroic – he simply wants to move on with his life. But how do you do that with no legs?

 

Gyllenhaal and Maslany are the reason to see the film, as they give remarkable performances, from the outside in. For Gyllenhaal, there seems to be a realization that what he needs to overcome is something internal – he’s not beating “it” – but beating something inside himself, that wants to wallow in self-pity. Maslany has, in some ways, the more difficult role – the ever supportive wife/girlfriend in these inspirational movies have sunk many a talented actress, who cannot breathe life into the stereotype – but that’s not what she asked to play here. She has her own struggle – as much as she loves Jeff, she isn’t going to stick around and be a nurse to him, or watch him destroy himself.

 

The film was directed by David Gordon Green – and it shows the talent that was readily apparent in his first (and best) movie George Washington – and its indie follow-ups before he went Hollywood. The most striking scene is the first time Jeff has his bandages removed – which is a shot that lasts for a few minutes, focused on Jeff’s face, with his legs blurry in the background. It’s a moment where you feel that pain that he is trying to overcome. Green does a good job here, mainly undercutting the sentiment in the story – unless he there is nothing really he can do, like in the big Red Sox game sequence.

 

The closing scenes of the movie do revert – at least a little – to those inspirational movie clichés – it kind of has to, given how the story turns out. But even then, the film realizes that Bauman’s story is not inspirational for him, and those who lived it day in and day out – for them, it was painful. It’s only inspirational when you don’t have to go through it. There is value in that inspiration to be sure – but there’s value in seeing behind it as well.

Movie Review: Our Brand is Crisis

Our Brand is Crisis
Directed by: David Gordon Green.
Written by: Peter Straughan suggested by the documentary by Rachel Boynton.
Starring: Sandra Bullock (Jane), Billy Bob Thornton (Pat Candy), Anthony Mackie (Ben), Joaquim de Almeida (Castillo), Ann Dowd (Nell), Scoot McNairy (Buckley), Zoe Kazan (LeBlanc), Dominic Flores (Hugo), Reynaldo Pacheco (Eddie), Louis Arcella (Rivera), Octavio Gómez Berríos (Pepe), Luis Chávez (Abraham).

The career of director David Gordon Green has been an interesting one. It started with four low budget films – George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow and Snow Angels – that show the influence of Terrence Malick (who signed on as a producer on some of them) – and were slow, brilliantly photographed films that reveal their characters, and their locations, wonderfully. These four made him one of my favorite young directors – but didn’t make very much money. He then moved into mainstream comedy with Pineapple Express (which was wonderful), and then Your Highness and The Sitter (which were not). Since then, he has struggled a little to regain his footing – Prince Avalanche with Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch, tried to bridge the gap between his early work and the comedy, with limited success, Joe, starring Nicolas Cage at his best, is the best of his recent work, Manglehorn, with Al Pacino, was interesting, but not very successful, and character piece. Green started as a director with a distinctive style all his own – you knew you were watching a David Gordon Green film. Now, you have no idea.

His latest is Our Brand is Crisis – a political satire starring Sandra Bullock as “Calamity” Jane – a political strategist who has had more failures in recent years than successes, and is all but out of the game, when she hired to come down to Bolivia and help the Presidential campaign of Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida), who is way behind in the pools, and is seen as being out of touch with the problems of real Bolivia – and is widely believed to want to contact the IMF the moment he is elected, which is apparently a very bad thing, although the movie never really explains way. Jane doesn’t really know or care about what a win for Castillo would actually mean for Bolivia – she just wants to win, especially since the current frontrunner has hired Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), her arch nemesis that she has never beaten, as his advisor. Jane arrives, and immediately starts to trying to change the message of Castillo’s campaign – to tell everyone Bolivia is in crisis, and only he can see it – and humanize him.

Most of the movie is played as a political comedy, with snappy dialogue that Bullock handles well, as does Billy Bob Thornton, and the rest of the cast. A little bit of lip service is paid to the people of Bolivia – mainly in the form of Eddie (Reynaldo Pacheco), who idolizes Castillo, and works on the campaign, and eventually shows Jane how he and his friends live in the slums. It isn’t pretty. The film has some nice bits of comedy – a dead llama for example – and for his part, Green keeps the pacing of the movie up and its all somewhat entertaining.

Yet the movie never quite works. It all seems so lightweight and inconsequential – that no one involved is taking it all that seriously. Perhaps that would less of a problem, but the end of the movie begs to be taken seriously – and offers an out of nowhere left turn where it tries to make you care for a character who had spent the rest of the movie basically be amoral (as all the other Americans in the movie are). Our Brand is Crisis either needed to take that whole conversion more seriously – or abandon it altogether. As it stands, the result is a rather toothless movie – it pulls its punches early, so it can deliver its would-be knock-out punch late – but as it stands, it doesn’t really land any of them. The cast – especially Bullock, who I think can go darker – deserved better than what they got. And the career of David Gordon Green keeps getting murkier.

Movie Review: Manglehorn

Manglehorn
Directed by: David Gordon Green.
Written by: Paul Logan.
Starring: Al Pacino (A.J. Manglehorn), Holly Hunter (Dawn), Chris Messina (Jacob), Harmony Korine (Gary), Natalie Wilemon (Clara Massey), Skylar Gasper (Kylie).


David Gordon Green’s career has been an odd one. I loved his first four films – George Washington (2000), All the Real Girls (2003), Undertow (2004) and Snow Angels (2007) – which were very small, intimate portraits of real people, that often drew comparisons to the work of Terrence Malick (who produced Undertow). But, nobody really saw those films – no matter how good they were – and so Green moved over into mainstream comedy – finding success in Pineapple Express (2008), and then utter failure in Your Highness and The Sitter (both 2011). He’s now in an odd spot in his career – trying to do something smaller and more personal, but still make it somewhat mainstream. His last two films – Prince Avalanche (2013) with Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as road workers in the middle of nowhere, and Joe (2014) with Nicolas Cage as an ex-con and the bond he forms with a teenage boy were both good (especially Joe), but he hasn’t reached the heights of his early career either. His latest, Manglehorn, tries some interesting things – both visually and with sound – and features two very good performances, by Al Pacino and Holly Hunter, but is so slight that there isn’t enough here to sustain a movie. You could have said the same thing about Green’s earliest films – but those had the rhythm of real life. Manglehorn feels somehow slight and contrived at the same time.

Pacino stars in the title role as AJ Manglehorn, an elderly locksmith who has been pining away from the same woman for decades now – writing her long letters that always come back return to sender, but he writes them anyway. He was married once – not to the woman he is so in love with – and had a son, Jacob (Chris Messina) – who doesn’t much like him, and doesn’t have a reason to – although Manglehorn does get along with his granddaughter. A younger woman at the bank, Dawn (Holly Hunter), does seem to like him though – he’s the friendly old customer who talks about his cat, and asks about her dog. Then there’s Gary – an old classmate of Jacob’s, played by director Harmony Korine – although what the hell he’s doing in the movie is anyone’s guess, no matter how amusing he can be.

The best thing you can say about Manglehorn is that it’s one of Pacino’s best recent performances – and his quietest. Pacino has – throughout his career – gone bombastic as often as not (and why not, when you’re as good at going bombastic as he is) – but it has become a crutch to him in recent years. Here – as in The Humbling from earlier this year – Pacino is trying, and succeeding, in toning that down. This is a quiet performance of a heartbroken, soft spoken man. He’s quiet, socially awkward, more than a little creepy – but he feels somewhat real. It’s perhaps even more of an accomplishment that Hunter makes her attraction to this man even slightly believable – as it makes no logical sense.

Other than that – and a few moments where Green experiments with visuals and sound – there isn’t much to Manglehorn. It’s a rather sad movie of a life wasted – that in the late stages he finally decides to move beyond. It’s a sad little movie – but there just isn’t enough here to make it worthwhile. 

Movie Review: Joe

Joe
Directed by: David Gordon Green.
Written by: Gary Hawkins based on the novel by Larry Brown.
Starring: Nicolas Cage (Joe Ransom), Tye Sheridan (Gary), Gary Poulter (Wade), Ronnie Gene Blevins (Willie), Heather Kafka (Lacy), Sue Rock (Merle), Adriene Mishler (Connie), Dana Freitag (Sue), Brenda Isaacs Booth (Mother Jones), AJ Wilson McPaul (Sheriff Earl).

It is easy to make fun of Nicolas Cage. He does little to help his own cause as a serious actor when he seemingly goes years between great performance and does one paycheck movie after another. He goes so long between great performances, filling out his resume with needless sequels, would-be blockbusters, and direct-to-video (or close to it) crap that it’s easy to forget how great he can be. But just when you’re willing to write him off yet again, he delivers another terrific performance that you cannot imagine another actor capable of pulling off. His last such role was in Werner Herzog’s insane Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans (2009) that ranks among the most inspired, insane performances in recent memory. And now comes his role in David Gordon Green’s Joe. Again, this is not a subtle performance – Cage doesn’t do subtle performances – but his larger than life performance in this movie elevates the entire movie. And the great thing about Joe is that there are two other performances in the film that manage to keep up with him.

Cage has the title role of Joe, a hard drinking ex-con with a violent temper he struggles to keep under control. When the movie opens, he seems to be doing a good job of that – basically by isolating himself from those around him. But he does have his own business, and seems reasonably successful at it. When he meets young Gary (the immensely talented Tye Sheridan last seen in Mud), a teenager with an abusive, alcoholic father Wade (Gary Poulter), who cannot support his family, he takes pity on him and hires him. Slowly, but surely, Joe starts to care about Gary – but when allows himself to become emotionally involved with Gary, he also finds it harder to control his other emotions – the ones that get him into trouble.

If the film is a comeback for Cage, it also marks a comeback for David Gordon Green. After four excellent, indie films (George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow and Snow Angels), and one successful studio comedy (Pineapple Express), Green looked to be one of the most interesting, young directors in America. Then he made two god-awful comedies in one year – Your Highness and The Sitter – and he seemed adrift, not knowing what to do next. Last year, he made Prince Avalanche, a decent film that tried, not altogether successfully, to combine his character driven dramas, with a buddy comedy. With Joe, while it’s not quite as good as his best films, Green is hopefully back on track. As with all of his films, Green is more comfortable in the films quieter moments – when he’s concentrating on his characters and their day-to-day lives, and less comfortable with narrative. The weakest moments of Joe are when a narrative is forced upon the characters – involving a lowlife criminal named Willie (Ronnie Gene Blevins – convincingly slimy) and his quest for vengeance against not only Joe, but Gary as well – for two separate incidents when both of them beat him up. At times, the movie veers a little too far of course in its depiction of its poor, Southern characters (you could call it poverty porn at times) and the climax of the film is a violent mess. Still, for most of the movie, Green is back to his old form, making a visually interesting, dark film about these characters, struggling to do the right thing.

He is aided greatly by Cage’s performance as Joe. Cage doesn’t rely on his normal bag of nervous ticks, but that doesn’t mean he’s still not playing a larger than life character, because he is. Joe is the type of character who is always the center of attention – he walks into a room, and even while doing nothing attracts all eyes to him. When Cage is in the zone like this, it can be difficult to keep up with him. It is remarkable than that young Tye Sheridan is more able to hold his own with him. In just three movies – Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, Jeff Nichols’ Mud and now this one, Sheridan has established himself as one of the best young actors around. While Joe may superficially resemble Mud – they are both about young men taken under the wing of an ex-con – the similarities between the movies, and the characters Sheridan plays, are only skin deep. Mud is more than fairy tale than anything else, where Joe is about as far away from a fairy tale as you can get. Sheridan plays a kid who wants desperately be adult, but is still a child. Perhaps even more remarkable than Sheridan’s performance is the one by Gary Poulter as Wade. Apparently, the late Poulter was an actual homeless man that Green found on location – and he loved him so much, he gave him this major role. That’s probably why Poulter doesn’t hit a false note as a man whose demons overwhelm him. He is a mean, nasty, abusive drunk – and Poulter is great. Too bad we’ll never see him in another role.

Joe is not a fun film to watch. It is dark and violent from beginning to end. But it is a film that contains three great performances, and for the most part is expertly directed by Green, who really seems to want to redeem himself for his recent failures. With Joe he’s back on track. And hopefully, it won’t be another four years before we get to see another performance this good from Nicolas Cage. When Cage is on – which he is in this film – there are few actors as good as he is.

Movie Review: Prince Avalanche

Prince Avalanche
Directed by: David Gordon Green.
Written by: David Gordon Green based on the film written by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson.
Starring: Paul Rudd (Alvin), Emile Hirsch (Lance), Lance LeGault (Truck Driver), Joyce Payne (Lady), Gina Grande (Madison), Lynn Shelton (Voice of Madison).

At one point, not that long ago, David Gordon Green was one of my favorite up and coming filmmakers. His first three films – George Washington (2000), All the Real Girls (2003) and Undertow (2004) – were great, small slices of life. He didn’t seem too interested in a standard plot, but was more interested in mood, tone and performance. His fourth film, Snow Angels (2007) was more plot driven than the first three, but was also a near-great film – a tragedy played out in intimate detail. Because those films made very little money, it didn’t surprise me when he decided to make something more mainstream. The result was Pineapple Express (2008) – which is one of the great stoner movies in recent memory, and although it seemed much different than his previous films – and was in many ways – it also shared some similarities. And then, things kind of flew off the rails for Green. Buoyed by the success of Pineapple Express, he made two comedies in 2011 – Your Highness and The Sitter – both of them nearly unwatchable. If one assumed that Green would adopt a “one for them, one for you” mentality that many in Hollywood have, the fact that he made three mainstream comedies in a row – and two of them awful – seemed to suggest otherwise. I feared that Green would become yet another indie causality – a talented director who showed a ton of promise, who gets chewed up and spit out by Hollywood.

His latest film, Prince Avalanche, then comes as a welcome relief. No, it’s not as good as Green’s earlier films, but it is at least a step in the right direction. Oddly, Green seems to be trying to combine the comedic elements of his more mainstream efforts, with the look and feel of his earlier films, and it makes for an odd marriage – not a bad one mind you, but an odd one.

The film stars Paul Rudd as Alvin and Emile Hirsch as Lance. The year is 1988, and the two of them work on the road crew, repainting the lines, hammering in polls, and gluing on reflectors, on a stretch of desolate Texas highway that had been destroyed by fire. The two of them spend the week with no company except for each other – camp out every night, and have seemingly little in common. Alvin did this job alone for a few months, but was convinced by his girlfriend to give her aimless brother Lance a job assisting him. While Alvin seems content to let the days pass in relative silence, Lance feels the need to chatter on endlessly. The two are seemingly polar opposites – which, of course, is the oldest strategy in the world when it comes to buddy comedies.

In some ways, that is what Prince Avalanche is. When the two are together, more often than not, they are arguing with each other – whether it’s about the radio, the food, the monotony or anything else, the two don’t see eye to eye on anything, so of course there’s friction. Green could have made a more mainstream buddy comedy out of this material – and even kept the same two actors, as Rudd and Hirsch have good screen chemistry, and play off each other well.

But then Green adds in scenes of more quiet contemplation – as when Lance goes away for the weekend, and Alvin stays behind to be at one with nature. Green may be trying a little too hard in these scenes to be artistic – some of the shots seem out of place, as if he were trying to earn the comparisons he got to Terrence Malick earlier in his career again. The presence of an older woman during this sequence is one of the emotional high points of the film – but her numerous reappearances over the course of the film don’t really seem to work. The same could be said of the truck driver who shows up occasionally – each time he shows up, it’s a little less effective than the last.

But Green does manage to get solid performances out of his two stars. Rudd has become a comedic star over the past few years, and I do think he can be hilarious, but Prince Avalanche is a welcome reminder that there is more to him than just those comedies. This is a quiet, subtle performance as a man who is essentially hiding from the world until he can no longer. Hirsch’s role doesn’t give him the same opportunity for complexity – and he is an actor who exudes a little too much intelligence to play a character so dim – yet he is still charming, and funny –he makes a good sidekick for Rudd.

In short, while Prince Avalanche is a set in the right direction for Green – a return to the type of personal, less narrative driven films he built his reputation on, it’s still not quite as good as his best. Perhaps though, this is a signal that Green wants to return to this type of film – or perhaps something even more ambitious – something more accessible than his first films, but more intelligent and grounded than his recent output. That’s a welcome sign. I took no joy in heavily criticizing a director I thought was well on the way to be one of the greats. Hopefully, after a detour, he’s back on track.

Movie Review: Your Highness

Your Highness *
Directed by: David Gordon Green.
Written by: Danny McBride & Ben Best.
Starring: Danny McBride (Thadeous), James Franco (Fabious), Natalie Portman (Isabel), Zooey Deschanel (Belladonna), Rasmus Hardiker (Courtney), Toby Jones (Julie), Justin Theroux (Leezar), Charles Dance (King Tallious), Damian Lewis (Boremont), Simon Farnaby (Manious the Bold), Deobia Oparei (Thundarian).

From 2000 to 2008, director David Gordon Green made four excellent films that almost no one saw. Starting with his haunting debut George Washington about kids growing up poor in the rural South, and moving onto his romance All the Real Girls, his Night of the Hunter inspired thriller Undertow and his tragic marriage drama Snow Angels, Green was establishing a signature style that drew comparisons to Terrence Malick, who produced some of his films. He was a director that I loved, even if no one else seemed to notice. But in 2008, I suppose, Green decided it was time to make some money, so he ventured into studio filmmaking. His first foray, the stoner-action-comedy Pineapple Express was an ingenious send-up of buddy action movie clichés, that gave James Franco one of his best roles, and really is a high water mark for recent, American, mainstream comedies. Now, he’s back at making a studio comedy – and the result is the almost painfully unfunny Your Highness. How the hell Green got to this point is anyone’s guess.

The movie stars and was co-written by Danny McBride, who was so good in his supporting role in Pineapple Express, as a drug dealer who is beaten, shot repeatedly, gets into a major car accident, and yet somehow keeps on coming back from the brink of death. McBride has been good in other supporting roles – in Tropic Thunder, Due Date, Up in the Air and Observe and Report for example. But every time I see him in a lead – as he was in the awful comedy The Foot Fist Way – I can’t help but think that a little McBride goes a long way.

Your Highness is a send-up of historical epics, with knights and sorcerers and Kings, damsels in distress, etc. It clearly takes the King Arthur legend as its jumping off point. The film tries to marry that type of story to a stoner comedy (the title for example can be taken two ways – har har). The movie really though is just a series of cock jokes – complete with a child molesting Muppet like creature (again I say har har sarcastically). A movie built on little more than cock jokes can work, I suppose, if those jokes are funny. When they’re not, and they are not in Your Highness, the result can be painful to watch.

Aside from McBride, who plays the slacker “hero” of the movie, the second son of a powerful King, jealous of his older brother, the movie makes some seemingly inspired casting choices. James Franco is his older brother, the Golden Boy, as it were who sets a standard that McBride cannot match. Natalie Portman is a woman they meet while on their “quest”. Zooey Deschannel, who is the only one in the movie who gives a decent performance, is the insanely naïve damsel in distress (she was kidnapped by an evil wizard as a child and kept in a tower her whole life, making her lacking in all social skills – she spends the movie with a hilariously blank look on her face). David Lynch regular Justin Theroux is that evil wizard. The supporting roles are played by independent mainstays like Toby Jones and Damien Lewis. This is a very good ensemble cast – that is completely wasted at the service of this awful screenplay.

I can see why Green directed this movie. He has a long history with McBride – going back to the later’s supporting role in All the Real Girls, and going through not just Pineapple Express, but also McBride’s well regarded TV show Eastbound and Down (which I have never seen), where Green is both a producer and sometimes director. But somewhere along the way someone had to step up and tell both Green and McBride that this screenplay was terrible, and should never be made. No one did. And sadly, it appears that Green is more than happy to keep churning out Hollywood comedies. His next film, due in August called The Sitter, stars Jonah Hill as a college student who gets talked into babysitting the kids next door – and gets more than he bargained for. Let’s hope it’s less Daddy Day Care than it sounds.