A sequel - “As Bad As It Gets” and they don’t come any worse than this. It is hard to judge whether the $50m this drivel cost is a bigger affront to sanity than is the patronising assumption from a bunch of actors who should know better, that we will find their arch posturing in this junk even remotely amusing. This delusional self-indulgence is made worse by the fact that many of the dire efforts to be funny are ad-libbed. Don’t these people ever watch the Oscars? If they did they would know that there is no one less amusing, bone-crunchingly and embarrassingly inarticulate than a Hollywood actor with no lines to read.

Being funny is a bit like being ‘cool’ – the more you think you are – the less you are. ‘Writer’ Danny McBride who plays nerdy waste-of-space Prince Thadeous to knightly hero brother Fabius (James Franco) obviously thinks he is a very funny man. We can tell this from his ‘look-at-me-being-f***ing-hilarious’ style of delivery. McBride appears to believe putting people in period costume and saying f*ck a lot just gets funnier the more times you repeat it. Of course the reverse is true. And masturbating a Yoda-like wizard doesn’t add much to sum of human hilarity either. The trouble is just describing this stuff makes it sound as if it might be funny in an adolescent, wet-dream kind of way. I wish.

There are no characters or characterisation in Your Highness: they are all line-deliverers about as well delineated as the Englishman the Irishman and the Scotsman in a Stand-Up comic’s weak joke. The plot is just a series of sketches designed to deliver excruciatingly unsuccessful opportunities to be funny: there are many lowlights here like the rib-tickling sight of a well-hung Minotaur shagging one of our intrepid heroes only to have his penis amputated as a necklace pendant for Thadeous. “Hand me my dick Courtney” – (and that’s the best line in the movie).

String together random scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, almost anything from Black Adder, then take away the quality of the writing and characterisation, eradicate every slither of comic timing and the comic talents of Cleese, Atkinson et al and you have Your Highness. It has all the lightness of touch of Jean-Claude Van Damme reading the shipping forecast.

What inducement in a moment of mental derangement possessed Nats Portman and Zooey Deschanel, let alone Charles Dance to have their names associated with this stuff is almost impossible to divine: except that it is no doubt green, crisp and crinkles a lot. No one is so hard-up that they have to demean themselves in this way.

Another classic in the 'all-the-funny bits-are-in-the-trailer' genre. And they are only funny in the trailer.

Consider your alternatives: root canal surgery is more fun; catching herpes is funnier; unblocking the toilet is more entertaining. Otherwise, by all means help the perpetrators of this dross to get their money back.

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