Your Highness, David Gordon Green's gratuitous, inventive, and thoroughly outlandish take on Tolkien lore, will undoubtedly be labeled as a parody of fantasy films such as The Princess Bride and Ron Howard's Willow. But it is also something of an ode to those films. No, this healthy portion of deeply perverse buffoonery is not in the same realm as the detestable pop-culture parodies of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg (Meet the Spartans, Epic Movie), in which lazy, inept direction and thoughtless writing are meant to mask the fact that the filmmakers are far too cowardly to ever put half the effort into their "films" as the people they openly mock do. On the contrary: Green's follow-up to the blood-soaked hydroponic actioner Pineapple Express exudes a deeply held love for those stories of knights questing, saving maidens, and doing battle with any number of villains, sorcerers, and beasts. It's also got an impressive assortment of gross-outs, awkward moments, stoner gags, and dick jokes.

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