When I was around ten or eleven, all I really wanted for Christmas was a glaive. Now, if you immediately found yourself thinking, “Well, who didn’t want a badass magical throwing weapon that looked like a jeweled starfish with knife blades, as featured in the 1983 box-office fantasy bomb Krull,” then you’ve already passed the first trial in your quest to determine if you’re part of the fairly narrow target audience for Your Highness. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, we may have to move on to other potential fan groups for this film, such as devotees of Your Highness star and co-writer Danny McBride’s Eastbound and Down. Still nothing? Well, if you like getting high, this party’s for you, too: “Highness” doesn’t just refer to the McBride character’s regal lineage.

I’m not trying to discourage potential viewers here, but I am making allowances for the fact that this movie really isn’t for everyone, no matter how much I loved it. There’s a reason why it currently sits at an anemic 27% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This is a movie made by nerdy dudes in their mid-30s who undoubtedly spent their formative years both revering and making fun of awful ’80s fantasy movies like Krull, Beastmaster and The Sword and the Sorcerer in between sessions of Dungeons & Dragons. As a member of that pimpled, date-free tribe myself, watching director David Gordon Green’s guilt-free pleasure in turning the fantasy touchstones of our youths into a stoner comedy of epically vulgar proportions on the lowest possible order was an absolute pleasure.

McBride and Green reportedly came up for the idea when the two former college buddies were working together on Green’s second feature, the 2003 arthouse drama All the Real Girls, in which McBride had a small role, his first. In the intervening years, McBride has had plenty of time to develop the persona that informs nearly all his roles: the lazy, libidinous, foul-mouthed, egotistical, none-too-bright layabout with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Thadeous, his character in Your Highness, is essentially Eastbound and Down‘s Kenny Powers with a bad British accent and a chain-mail vest.

Thadeous’ failures are magnified by the noble warrior prowess of his older brother, and heir to the throne, Fabious — who James Franco eagerly imbues with the chivalrous self-seriousness of every ’80s fantasy hero crossed with a laid-back surfer cool. But when Fabious’ virgin bride Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by an evil sorcerer (played by a scene-chewing Justin Theroux) the king decides that it’s time for Thadeous to man up and actually join his older brother on a quest for once, instead of hanging around the castle shagging handmaidens and clowning around with his squire. Along the way, they also meet a mysterious warrior (Natalie Portman) as attractive as she is deadly, sworn to stop the sorcerer for her own reasons.

Green, McBride, and their Eastbound cohort Ben Best (who co-wrote the film with McBride) twist that generic fantasy template by dropping stoner comedy staples into the first act of the film, and modern vulgarities throughout. On the surface, it’s incongruous, given that fantasy films default to settings and language that are ostensibly of the Middle Ages. But those choices are really fairly arbitrary: most of these fantasies take place on entirely different worlds, and the medieval trappings only ground the unfamiliar in something recognizable. The filmmakers, recognizing that there are no particular rules except what me make up for ourselves for these movies, playfully ask: why not throw 21st-century drug use and profanity crashing into this genre to heighten the potential for big, dumb laughs?

How big the laughs are probably depends solely on your individual tastes, but there’s little argument about whether they’re dumb. But let’s face it: so were the movies they’re referencing. That didn’t make them any less enjoyable, and neither does it hurt Your Highness — if you’re in the right frame of mind. This is comedy of hugely broad proportions, that takes aim so low that it seems likely that there were dares going on between the writers to see just who come up with the most raunchy, classless jokes imaginable. Credit to whichever writer came up with the ongoing gag-inducing gag involving a minotaur penis: you won, just barely beating out whoever had the idea for a two-foot-tall herb-puffing wise wizard that vaguely resembles a turtle and offers wisdom in exchange for handjobs.

But what’s also evident in every scene is how much fun everyone here is having, a band of excellent performers goofing off with reckless, obscene abandon for a couple of hours. Some critics have lamented the “fall” of David Gordon Green, who was once heralded as the heir-apparent to Terrence Malick after his elegiac debut masterpiece, George Washington, and the string of quiet, artful dramas that followed. They see his move into comedy with Pineapple Express and Eastbound as a potentially great director slumming it, with Your Highness as rock bottom. I see a director who doesn’t make value distinctions between art and trash, and is admirably able to jump from one to the other, throwing his considerable vision behind either with equal enthusiasm.

I can’t promise that you’ll any more enamored of Your Highness than any of the other 75 percent of critics who are hating on it with every word at their disposal. Me? I laughed my ass off at every reference to every bad movie I watched as a kid that featured dwarves, damsels and dashing royal warriors, given bizarre new context for little reason other than to see if they could. Sometimes no reason is reason enough. And sometimes all you want is a little stupid fun made by smart people, and on that score, Your Highness is king of the lower depths of bad taste.

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Your Highness
Directed by David Gordon Green
Written by Danny McBride and Ben Best
Starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux
Running time: 102 minutes
Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity, violence and some drug use.
Opens today at theaters throughout the area.

Note: the trailer posted here is the red band version, which contains language that is most definitely NSFW, but gives you a pretty good sense of what you’re in for.