Miral

MPAA (R) Michael Phillips (2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Michael Phillips review

I did not expect to like Miral (directed by Julian Schnabel, novel and scenario by Rula Jebreal) as much as I did. However,did I ever _come to love_ this movie and for a whole host of reasons. So let me list them now:

First, one lesson that I’ve learned in my life has been that one of the greatest tragedies of the "great historical dramas" that play out around us is that they simply impose another layer of awfulness over the smaller/more intimate tragedies in life. I wrote about this as well in my review of the Spanish movie Biutiful (about a couple of second generation descendants of Moroccan immigrants trying to make out an existence in Barcelona of today). The movie Miral, however, takes this point and presents it in spades.

For while "the grand drama" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays-out, the characters in Miral, continue to suffer their multitude of such smaller/more intimate tragedies. The main character Miral’s mother, Nadia (played by Yasmine Al Massri), was sexually abused as a teenager. Miral’s saintly father, Jamal (played by Alexander Siddig) an imam at the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, who fell in love and married Miral’s mother _precisely_ because she was such a mess, eventually comes down with cancer. Hind Hussaini (played by Haim Abbass), the directress of the boarding school to which Miral is assigned after Miral’s troubled mother commits suicide, eventually succumbs to old age. Miral (played by Frieda Pinto) herself grows up something of an orphan, though she goes home to be with her father every weekend. Everyone of these stories could have made for a movie in itself.

And yes, I have the order of the story "right." As Miral herself begins to narrate her story, she begins by saying "I was born in 1973 but my story really began in 1947 (with the partition plan to divide Palestine between Israel and the Palestinians)." As one who also could not explain easily why I was born in the United States without explaining how my parents got here (my parents were Czech immigrants who came to the United States by means two sets of terrible stories), I understood _completely_ why "Miral’s story" began 27 years before she was born – Both Hitler and Stalin were unwanted but ever present "guests" at my home at every family gathering that I remember growing-up. And plenty of Jewish Americans and Israelis growing up with stories of their parents and grandparents living during the Holocaust could certainly appreciate the back-dated beginnings of their stories as well.

So hanging over the "more normal"/ "little" tragedies that still afflict most of us in one way or another, in the story of Miral was _added_ the _awful pall_ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in a perpetual state of anxiety on the part of Israelis and in a seemingly unending torrent of tragedies on the part of the Palestinians, bringing _no one peace_. Israelis can’t even enter a bus or a movie theater without feeling anxious about exposing themselves to possible terrorist attack, Palestinians have their homes torn down by Israeli battering rams and earth movers in retribution for crimes that a relative may (or may not) have been involved in; close friends get killed by stray Israeli bullets dispersing rioters/demonstrators (whether they were involved or not); and they are beaten / tortured when they get picked-up by Israeli authorities on suspicion of being involved in _possible_ terrorist/subversive activity. How unbelievably awful.

Second, I liked this movie because it was presented largely from _the perspective of the young_. I am convinced that by the time one is in one’s 40s, one’s large life decisions have been played out. Hence the imams, the school directors, yes, the Israeli military officers or the PLO officials operating (then) out of Tunisia have largely played out their hands (as best as they could), but I do believe that it is the young, those in their late teens through their twenties, who have a chance to make something better. And to its credit, the movie shows THAT THERE IS HOPE. And I myself can testify to that hope.  When _I_ was in grad school, still studying engineering back then before changing directions and becoming a priest, I knew a good number of Arab students in my department and it struck me that _always_ among the most moderate were the Palestinians. One of them put it very, very well to me one time: "We have to find a way to life in peace. We simply have to. To others (and other Arabs) this is a theoretical conflict. To us, we see it day to day. The land is too small, we live too close together, we have to find a way to live in peace."

And _this sentiment_ that I heard 20 years ago, plays out in this movie. Miral, a young woman in her late teens falls in love with a Palestinian fighter, Hani (played by Omar Metwally)  He is a determined patriot but _not_ a crazed fanatic. In fact, he ends up being killed by more radical Palestinian fighters because _he_ was willing to go along with Arafat's PLO and accept 22% of Palestine for a Palestinian state in return for peace.

Then when Jerusalem proves too hot for Miral’s safety, her saintly imam father sends her to her aunt living in Haifa. There Miral finds that her cousin has fallen in love with an Israeli girl named Lisa (played by Stella Schnabel). Initially, she disapproves, but Lisa proves to be nice (even though Lisa’s father is an Israeli military officer and disapproves with her having Palestinian friends).

In the Bible, it took a generation of wandering out in the Desert before the Israelites made it to the Promised Land (and I know that we can choose to take this image _literally_ or perhaps today, more appropriately _symbolically_). Perhaps it will take _several generations_ before peace is finally achieved between the Israelis and Palestinians, BUT I AM POSITIVE THAT IT WILL COME AS A RESULT OF THE CONTACTS AND THE _INNOCENCE_ / _CLEAN SLATE_ OF THE YOUNG. With each generation there is new hope.

AND THIS HOPE EXTENDS BEYOND THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT. I currently live and work in a part of Chicago where for at least 2-3 generations a collection of Slavs, Irish and Italians (calling themselves "Anglos" but have as much in common with "the English" as Cortes ever did) have looked down on Hispanics (mostly Mexicans with a few Puerto Ricans) living in the same neighborhoods, with the Hispanics resenting them for their arrogance. How long can this go on? The hope is that with every generation, it does get better, and I do believe that it does. The former Pope John Paul II, who’s being beatified on May 1^st, must be rolling in his grave, knowing that Poles and Mexicans (whom he _loved_ and  there is AN ENORMOUS STATUE OF JOHN PAUL II by the side of the BASILICA OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE IN MEXICO CITY) don’t get along in places like Chicago. How is it possible when BOTH peoples suffered so much and BOTH peoples _love_ the Blessed Mother so much? And yet we look for reasons to dislike/hate each other. Yet with EACH GENERATION springs NEW HOPE and with each generation it _does_ get better.

Finally, I liked this movie because it is filled with great role models on all sides. There’s the Directress of the School, Miral’s imam father, Lisa the Israeli girlfriend of Miral’s cousin. There’s even the convicted Palestinian terrorist (a former nurse) who helps Miral’s mother when Miral’s mother finds herself in jail after causing a simple commotion on a bus ("get away from me, you creep," remember that she had been sexually abused...) rather than being in the process blowing up the bus as the other (Israeli) passengers feared. Almost no one is completely evil, and many, many people, if at times weak, are basically good.

So what a great and brave film! As the movie notes at the end, it is "dedicated to those who believe that peace is possible." So ... Shalom / Salaam / Paz / Pokój z wámi.  And may we one day have Peace.


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Rio [2011]

MPAA (G) CNS/USCCB (A-I) Mike Phillips (2 stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Michael Phillips review

Rio (story and directed by Brazilian-born Carlos Saldanha screenplay by Don Rhymer) is fun animated movie giving "birds eye" view of Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval time.  With Brazil becoming increastingly important on the world stage (along with India and China) it probably makes sense for Hollywood to start making more Brazil friendly/Brazil themed movies such as this.  (Indeed, Rio apparently was released in Latin America several weeks before its release in the United States on April 15th).  And the bird metaphor actually worked very, very well in presenting the color and craziness of carneval time in Rio. 

Okay, so what is the story?  Baby Blue Macaw later named Blu (voice by Jesse Eisenberg) wakes up one morning in a tropical forest outside of Rio and falls out of his nest only to be captured by bird smugglers who eventually send him to the United States.  Sometime later, he finds himself falling out of a crate in a place decidely "Not Rio" (as the movie notes) -- Moosehead, Minnesota in the winter, where a girl named Linda finds him and raises him).  And Blu is as happy as can be as Linda's companion, who even names the eventual book store that she opens after him.

Their tranquility is broken however when Tulio, an ornitologist from Brazil arrives and tells Linda that Blu is the only known male left of his entire species and that Linda must let him mate with Jewel (voice by Anne Hathaway) the only known female of Blu's species who he now has at his laboratory in Rio de Janeiro.  After initial resistance by both Linda and Blu, they decide to travel with Tulio to see if Blu and Jewel could mate.

Initially Jewel is not impressed with the nerdy Blu because he can't even fly.  However, when the two care captured once more by a small gang of bird smugglers Marcel, Tipa and Armando (voiced by Carlos Ponce, Jeffrey Garcia, Davi Vieira) and taken to their hide-out in a favela in the hills of Rio de Janeiro for sale and transport once again out of the country, they realize that they have to work together.  Their attempts at escape are aided by a family man Tucan named Rafael (voice by George Lopez) as well as two other birds Nico and Pedro (voices by Jamie Foxx and Will i Am) who try to help Blu better impress Jewel in matters of love.

The smugglers are aided by a british sounding Cockletoo named Nigel (voice by Jemaine Clement) who also recruits the city's monkeys to recapture the two Blue Macaws when they do break free.

Much happens, and a climactic part of it happens during Rio's Carneval Parade.  In the midst of their adventures Linda, who's never been outside of Minnesota (in good part, ironically, in order to take care of her bird Blu), finds that she _likes_ Rio, driving a motorbike down the windy streets of a favela "just like a snowmobile."  And "all ends well" with both sets of "love birds," avian (Blu and Jewel) and human (Linda and Tulio) living happily ever after. 

Now that is the story, yet as often is the case, there's more to Rio than simply a cute animated story about tropical birds.

First, there were several homages to recent Brazilian films that enjoyed international and critical success.  For instance, when Blu and Jewel first escape their bird smuggling captors, the scene that follows appeared to be an animated send-up to the "flight of the chicken" scene at the beginning of Cidade de Deus (City of God).  Then, more poignantly, Linda and Tulio adopt street kid Fernando, who helped them find Blu and Jewel, reminding one of the beautiful Brazilian movie (and a real tear-jerker) Central do Brazil (Central Station) about a street kid whose mom got hit by a bus in front of the central train station in Rio de Janeiro and he had absolutely no one to turn to except for a middle-aged woman who arguably had ripped him and his mother off less than 10 mintues before. 

Then Linda opens a new bookstore in Rio named "Livreria Blu" still with a picture with her beloved Blu on the storefront window but _pointedly_ (and I've known a few Brazilians who've made the point) now takes care of Fernando (a kid in need) rather than Blu (a pet), letting Blu and Jewel "live happily ever after" on their own.  Brazilians that I've known over the years have often made the point that Americans seem more concerned about animals and trees than (poor) people in need.  So, point taken and _understood_.

Finally, after several disappointing recent animated and kid oriented pictures, this is one that I've really enjoyed.  And I liked it precisely because it seemed to include everybody.  The cast was huge and diverse.  Contrast that with the recent almost bleached white Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick's Rules or Hop where British sounding Easter bunnies ruled over Hispanic sounding Easter chicks and the chief and _only_ villain was "Carlos" the foreman chick who wished to overthrow the bunnies.  What kind of a message is that to _both_ white and hispanic children? 

In this regard, it needs to be noted (and again, my only criticism of this movie would be) that there was a needlessly British sounding "villain bird" in Rio.  However, Rio did have human villains who were Brazilian (and Brazilians like Tulio and Fernando who were heroes as well).  And Brazilians that I've known have often liked to remind me that Brazil's problems are often not of its own doing but imposed from outside -- often from Britain and the U.S.A.  So in "bird brained" Nigel, there could have been a jab against Britain and the U.S.A. in this movie as well.

Still, both the casting and the plot of the story was one which gave a positive message that truly everyone belonged.  And for a Catholic, who believes in a _universal church_ (that's what Catholic means), big enbough for everybody, what a nice message.  Parabens Senhor Saldanha!

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Chungui, horror sin lágrimas... una Historia Peruana (Chungui, a horror without tears ... a Peruvian story)

Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1894431/

 Chungui, horror sin lágrimas... una Historia Peruana (directed by Felipe Degregori) is a Peruvian (Spanish / Quechua language with English subtitles) documentary that recently played at the 2011 Chicago Latino Film Festival about the return of anthropologist Edilberto Jiménez to his native land of Ayacucho in the mountains of central Peru to tell the story of sufferings of the inhabitants of the region of Chungui, a part of the Department of Ayacucho, devastated during the years of the Maoist-inspired Shining Path insurgency (1980-1995). 

Interviewing the native people, Jiménez took a page from the famed 16th century native Peruvian chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala who had included several hundred handmade illustrations in his great work El Primer Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno (First New Chronicle and Good Governance) addressed to the Spanish King to document and protest the mistreatment of the natives of Peru by the Spanish conquistadores.  Thus Jiménez similarly drew dozens of poignant illustrations of the terrors suffered by the inhabitants of Chungui at the hands by the Shining Path as well as Peruvian government counter-insurgency forces. 

As is often the case in civil wars, the utterly innocent natives were first terrorized by the Shining Path guerrillas into submission and then by government forces for collaborating with them.  Still, the horrors inflicted on the people by the Shining Path were of a category all its own: torturing people by slowly dismembering them and, yes, believe it or not, worse.  How any movement, much less one purporting to be a _progressive_ (a "shining") one, would descend into such a pit of evil is difficult to comprehend.  Yet, the Khmer Rouge (also Maoist in inspiration) in Cambodia perpetrated similar horrors.  Apparently, the "power" that comes "from a barrel of a gun" is a horrific one and the leaders of the Shining Path had lost all discipline over their cadres.

Also featured in the documentary was a Catholic priest, who was slowly rebuilding the devastated churches in the region.  He explained to Jiménez that initially he was restoring the altar pieces in ways featuring traditional Catholic themes.  However, as he heard more and more of the horrors suffered by the people during the Shining Path insurgency, he started to incorporate scenes from their Calvaries in his art as well, the result becoming scenes that could have been out of the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) or Dante's Inferno. 

This movie was not easy to watch and many in the audience when I saw it were in tears.  The contrast between a native people that dresses and decorates its otherwise humble abodes in such bright colors and the blood red horrors that they had to face at the hands of the uniformly black-uniformed Shining Path guerrillas was often difficult to bear.  Yet, Jiménez did not want the world to forget the sufferings of the people of his native land.


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Operación Diablo (Devil's Operation)

Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

Operación Diablo (directed by Stephanie Boyd) is a Peruvian (Spanish language, English subtitled) documentary that recently played at the 2011 Chicago Latino Film Festival regarding a discovery made by activists protesting operations at the Yanacocha gold mines in Peru operated by the Colorado based Newmont Mining Corporation.

Led by Father Marcos Arana, peasants had successfully blocked expansion of the mine in 2004 only to find that soon afterwards, leading activists, including Father Marcos were being tailed and videotaped by goons. Tired of this, Fr. Marcos chased down one of these spies with his car, called in authorities and discovered that a private intelligence firm named Forza had been hired (presumably by the Newmont Mining Co.) to follow and report on the activities of Fr. Marcos and the other activists. The sophistication of the operation, including minute to minute logs of the waking hour movements of the surveilled people along with pictures and charts stunned the authorities.  The matter was widely reported in the Peruvian press.

Forza had apparently been made up of former intelligence officers from the Fujimori era in Peru, left unemployed after Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was forced to resign in 2000 and was later jailed for corruption and human rights abuses. Forza was implicated in the torture and killing of activists protesting at another gold mine in another part of Peru. The tactics used by Forza on sequestered protesters there were reminiscent of those made infamous at Abu Gharib in Iraq.

Forza therefore becomes a Peruvian example of a growing worldwide phenomenon of the emergence of private intelligence-security firms like the American firm Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) the full ramifications of their emergence not yet fully understood.

Operación Diablo takes its name for the "code name" of "Diablo" (Devil) given to Fr. Marcos by agents of Forza in their operation of him and his colleagues. I found the movie to be both interesting and disconcerting.


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Arthur (2011)

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (A-III) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr Dennis (1 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1334512/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/a/arthur2011.shtml
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110406/REVIEWS/110409993

Arthur (starring Russell Brand, directed by Jason Winer, screenplay by Peter Baynham, story by Steve Gordon) is a remake of the 1981 original (starring Dudley Moore, written and directed by Steve Gordon). Neither version is particularly filled with edifying values. I suppose I prefer the remake over the original because I’ve generally liked Russell Brand while I’ve never appreciated or understood Dudley Moore.

Dudley Moore’s career was at its height when I was a teenager/young adult and I simply found nothing of value in his "middle-aged high society drunk" persona ("Ah, the sufferings of the rich..."). Now twenty years later, I’m middle aged ... but I still don’t particularly like or understand Dudley Moore’s characters. I do find Russell Brand’s often whiny "I’m a celebrity, you owe me" persona that he’s played in a number of movies (Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek) a little more accessible to Moore’s if only because he plays the roles as if he were a "rock star" and I’m more familiar with the expected antics of a "rock star" than those of someone who’s spent his/her life traveling between a Manhattan penthouse and the Hamptons. Still, if a remake of Arthur really needed to be made (I did not like the original), then Russell Brand was probably a really good choice for the remake’s title role.

Now about the characters and the plot: Arthur is about a "filthy rich 30-40 something boy-man" Arthur (played in the original by Dudley Moore and in the remake by Russell Brand) who insulated by his money has never grown up. In each case, he’s pressured by family to marry a woman of his social class who the parent/family believes would finally "make something of him." In the original, the parent doing the pressuring was Arthur’s father Stanford (played by Thomas Barbour); in the remake it was Arthur’s mother Vivienne (played by Geraldine James). In both cases, the woman that the pressuring parent wanted Arthur to marry was named Susan. In the original, Susan was played by Jill Eikenberry, in the remake by Jennifer Gardner. In both cases, Arthur simply does not love this woman. Instead, Arthur comes to prefer a different woman of a much different (lower/simpler) class. In the original, Arthur’s true love interest becomes Linda (played by Liza Minelli) in the remake she's named Naomi (played by Greta Garwig). In both cases, Arthur’s true parent or mentor figure was named Hobson. In the original, Hobson was Arthur’s butler (played by John Geilgud); in the remake, Hobson is Arthur’s nanny (played by Helen Mirren).

In both cases, despite having been pressured by family, Arthur finally makes his own way. The 2011 version probably has a _somewhat_ more edifying ending. In either case, it’s hard to find much of great moral value, except perhaps that everyone has a right (and a duty) to ultimately take responsibility for one’s own life.


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Elite

MPAA (unrated) Fr. Dennis (2 ½ stars)
IMDb Listing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1731982/

Elite (directed by Andres Ramirez, screenplay by Jean-Paul Polo, Josean Rivera Vaquer and José A. Rivera Vaquer) is a low budget ($200,000) Spanish language-English subtitled Puerto Rican crime / action film that is an entry at the 2011 Chicago Latino Film Festival. It is also the very first movie I’ve ever seen at a film festival and I have to say that I’ve enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed it not just for the movie, which was okay (not great but okay, but look at the budget ;-), but also for the context provided by the director Ramirez after the screening of the film.

Ramirez explained that Elite is novel because most films made with government subsidy or support in Latin America end up being "art films" and he and the others in this movie felt that there was a need to expand the horizons of what’s possible in the Puerto Rican film community. Action films are very popular, why not try to make an action film? Indeed, he noted that Elite was released two weeks after the release of the Expendibles (with Bruce Willis) in Puerto Rico and that Elite didn’t do altogether that badly and that since the making of Elite in 2010, at least 5 other projects of different genres have been given support to proceed. And I honestly think that is great!

And since Elite was such a low budget affair, the makers of the movie were able to have some fun with it. Notably, Ramirez explained that one of the actors Rodolfo Rodríguez (who played Féliz Flores, a key villain in story) asked if he could play his character "gay," saying that he always wanted to play a "gay mobster." And so Ramirez and the writers let him do it! These things are possible if you’re putting together a low budget affair ;-)

Still the movie, light as it often is, touches on some rather tough issues, notably the drug trade and the corruption that it carries with it, everywhere really, but also then in Puerto Rico.

The story begins 20 years in the past with a fictionalized Puerto Rican drug kingpin José Saldaña (played by John Garcia) telling a messenger from Pablo Escobar that whoever else Escobar may be elsewhere that "Aqui [en Puerto Rico] manda Saldaña. (I run things here)." Very good. The messenger leaves to carry the message back to Escobar, but as Saldaña leaves the meeting as well, he is stopped by a police road block and discovers that his right hand man of the last 5 years, Diego Torres (played by José Yenque) was an undercover cop. Angry at being so betrayed, he shoots Torres before being arrested.

In the next scene, the prosecutor Carlos Garcia (played by Ernesto Concepción, Jr) is making his closing argument against Saldaña, noting with sarcasm how Saldaña has tried to portray himself as an upstanding citizen (even though he was arrested after flagrantly assassinating a police officer, Torres, in cold blood). "Look at his fine dress, and his fine family sitting so nicely behind him, his wife, his two little children. Solo falta el perrito (All that's missing is the little dog ;-)." Saldaña is convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

More forward to 20 years later. For some reason after rotting away in jail for those 20 years, Saldaña is suddenly ordered transferred from one prison to another. On the way between the two prisons, the van carrying him along with the police escort are stopped, the police are killed and Saldaña is freed.

"How could that have be?" asks now Governor Carlos Garcia immediately suspecting some sort of an inside job and obviously worried for his safety and that of his family. His advisor Superintendente Angel Gil (played by José Brocco) suggests that the Governor organize an elite squad of incorruptible police officers to recapture Saldaña or if that proves impossible to "take care of him" in the way that Pablo Escobar was finally "taken care of." The Governor agrees and the Superintendent as well as his assistant Amanda (played by Monica Steuer) put together the squad that includes among others Sandra Torres (played by Denise Quiñones) the now grown daughter of the undercover police officer who Saldaña had killed in cold blood.

After a silly send-up of the requisite "training sequence" that these kind of films always seem to have, the squad sets about its work to find Saldaña. Included in this group of elite crime fighters is also a requisite "geek" pulled up from the police’s computer department and who had previously gotten a degree at MIT before returning back to San Juan.

In the meantime, Saldaña finds that he has his own problems. While certainly grateful that he was freed, he doesn’t exactly understand why, especially since his now grown sons Junior and Jaime (played by Leonardo Castro and José/Josean Rivera Vaquer) tell him that his rescue was actually put together by a strangely gay mobster acquaintance Félix Flores (played by Rodolfo Rodríquez). The elder Saldaña simply can’t get around Félix’s sexual orientation. "Much has certainly changed in the 20 years that I’ve in prison. How could it be that a gay man could now be (effectively) running our operation?" And he asks his two sons where they found Félix to begin with. They answer that he came to them "from the Bronx."

Okay, much happens, often in quite amusing ways (again, part of the intent of the movie was to be a "send up" of far more serious and far higher budget action films). And justice is done.

However, when the dust clears a question remains: Was the Elite squad assembled to apprehend or otherwise bring back to justice a dangerous fugitive or was it actually put together to simply help one crime family move in on the turf (and eliminate) another? Welcome to the ambiguities of the Drug War.

I liked this film and found it to be quite creative on a shoe-string budget. And I wish Andres Ramirez and the others involved in this film all well in the future! Who knows what else they’ll come up with in years to come ;-)


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Your Highness

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (1 star) Fr. Dennis (2 ½ stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1240982/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/y/yourhighness2011.shtml
Roger Ebert’s review
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110406/REVIEWS/110409994

Your Highness (directed by David Gordon Green, written by Danny McBride and Ben Best) is a type of movie that I knew is out there, that I generally enjoy and that I’d find somewhat embarrassing to add to my blog. Still after reviewing a number of far more serious movies, what a relief it was to see something goofy, yes adolescent, reminiscent of jokes and stories that one’d hear by a campfire as a kid and later as a teen. Your Highness is something of a send-up of sword and sorcery stories, though that assumes that most such stories are deathly serious and many, in fact, are not.

In the movie, Danny McBride plays the loser younger prince Thadeous to an older ever dashing, ever successful, ever smiling brother prince Fabious (played by James Franco) who actually loves his younger brother very much, and probably thinks more of him than Thadeous thinks of himself. But that’s what makes Fabious so simultaneously irritating and fun to watch: He loves _everybody_, he’s _always_ smiling and always successful, whereas Thadeous lives life in the shadows, usually obscured by a cloud of dope, with his only friend Courtney (played by Rasmus Hardiker), Thadeous’ squire.

Things begin to come to a head when Fabious comes back successfully from yet another quest with the head of a cyclops, and a damsel that he rescued named Belladonna (played by Zooey Deschanel) who he wishes to marry. The cyclops had been a minion of the kingdom’s great nemesis, the evil warlock Leezar (played by Justin Theroux) and Belladonna had been Leezar’s prisoner. The King, Tallious (played by Charles Dance), so proud of his ever questing older son, decrees that so it shall be, and a wedding is set for the next day. Ever smiling, ever optimistic, Fabious asks his younger brother to be his best man. Thadeous accepts even though others in Fabious’ questing party make it clear that they feel he’s not worthy. Thadeous, thus gets stoned the next morning and blows off the wedding and Boremont (played by Damian Lewis), Fabious’ right-hand-man in this questing adventures, steps-in to take Thadeous’ place. In the meantime, it also becomes somewhat clear that Belladonna may have been a pretty “damsel in distress” but precisely because Leezar had kept her as a hostage for most of her life, she didn’t exactly have the refined manerisms of a princess.

None of this comes to matter, however, because Leezar appears at the wedding along with his _three_ very creepy mothers, steals Belladonna from the ceremony, and carries her off to his tower. The stoned Thadeous, of course, who along with his squire, spent the day harrassing and dispersing sheep of a bunch of similarly stoned peasants, misses all of this, and comes back to a castle heavily damaged from the battle in which Leezar took Belladonna, and back to a distraught Fabious, who now decides to go out on quest once more to retrieve the bride that he loves. The King, still furious at the absence of his younger son to all these events, orders Thadeous to join Fabious on this quest or else to never come back.

And so they depart the next morning. Much ensues, much of it both funny and very, very crude. As an example, Fabious insists that at the beginning of the quest they visit the “Good Wizard of the Woods” and joyful that Thadeous is with him this time, is happy to introduce him to said wizard. He tells Thadeous that “since a child,” he’s _always_ gone to the wisard for good advice at the beginning of every quest. When they get to the wizard's abode, it’s clear that the “good wizard,” while indeed capable of giving good direction (in this case through a magical compass that he gives Fabious and Thadeous) is one smiling but very creepy guy. Everybody seems to see the creepiness of the wizard except for the also ever smiling Fabious...

During their many adventures, the two also meet Isabel (played by Natalie Portman) a fearsome and very, very hot warrior who is out to avenge the deaths of her father and brothers. And it turns out that their quests are somewhat linked because Leezar was probably responsible for their deaths.

The movie is often very crude.  There is some rather unnecessary nudity in the movie (though not by way of either Deschanel's Belladonna or Portman's Isabel) but rather as a result of the questing party encountering a group of Amazon-like female warriors, who are led a very, very creepy male chieftain. Then there’s a very, very crude scene near the end of their adventure involving a rather aroused Minotaur that the party encounters in a requisite labyrinth (where minotaurs always live...).

Once more, the movie is definitely “not for everyone,” and people have asked why actors of the caliber of James Franco and Natalie Portman or for that matter Zoey Deschanel would "waste their time" with a movie like this.  But I do think "I get" part of the appeal (for both the actors and the audience).  It's a movie can be very entertaining for those who’ve liked these kind of stories or for those just want kick back and relax after after a long week (or after taking themselves _way too seriously_ for some time).  It must have been a blast to make this movie! 

And lest we get too high on our horses, I do wish to remind folks here that the Bible’s book of Judges contains many stories that can best be understood ones told as jokes or stories around a campfire some 3500 years ago. Of particular note is the story of Ehud the Assassin who slew the King of Moab with a homemade dagger, the story noting that the King of Moab was so fat that his rolls of fat swallowed the dagger in its entirety so that Ehud could not pull the dagger back out (Judges 3:12-27). Not denying the story’s possible or even probable historicity, it still sounds like a story that would have been quite popular among young men sitting around an Israelite campfire “back in the day.”

Anyway, please don’t live your lives like this, but (for some of you) enjoy the film ... ;-)


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