More often than not, the success of a movie can be attributed to its director. This time, it's the actors.

Rating: 7/10 (3 April 2012)

More often than not, the success of a motion picture can be attributed to the discipline and talents of the director. Obviously, there are many other people involved--hundreds, often--but the man yelling "Cut!" and "Action!" will often, with a good script at hand, also judge whether his project will be a success or a failure. That is the case most of the time, but not with "The King's Speech." Rather, the directing, by Tom Hooper, is rather pretentiously artsy, like something from a second-rate avant-garde movie. So he can not, as far as I am concerned, be awarded for the overall success of this movie (I'm talking about aesthetics, not the Oscars) but rather, the actors.
The people in "The King's Speech" make good acting look easy. They include Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Michael Gambon. Firth tackles the tricky role of playing King George VI, a monarch who had a famous speech handicap: he could hardly utter a sentence without stuttering. I'm not an authority on British history, but as the movie tells the story, it is shortly before Britain's involvement in World War II, and Mr. Firth is near the time where he must speak to the entire world. To help him, his wife (Miss Bonham-Carter) enlists the assistance of a speech therapist (Mr. Rush), who forms a friendship with the king.
Some might be affronted by "The King's Speech"'s apparent lack of concern about other historical matters at the time its story takes place. Chiefly, how King George VI appears to have been more concerned about eradicating his stutter as opposed to governing a country and leading them into war against Adolf Hitler. This is the overall concern of the picture; it might as well have been a fictional story about a fictional man just wanting to speak better. That may also be one of its weaknesses, and why it did not involve me on a broader scale.
But involved I was in the dynamic between Mr. Firth as the king and Mr. Rush as the therapist who helps him. They have such strong chemistry together and play off their costar's personalities so efficiently. Mr. Firth, in particular, is wonderful in the movie. It is difficult to effectively play a person with a handicap. Many times, an actor will just succumb into ham-acting or play-acting. Not here. Mr. Firth, with his dialogue-driven character, convinced me in every shot that he was a human being with a speaking problem. Geoffrey Rush plays the wise but eccentric doctor without being ostentatious or smarmy. Miss Bonham-Carter, most of the time, is effective. She just occasionally slides into her bizarre alter-ego which has undoubtedly been influence of her involvement in so many Tim Burton movies. But again, that only shows here and there. Most of the time, she's very good as well.
But directing in any movie, good or bad, cannot be ignored. Therefore, I must elaborate my severe reservations about Tom Hooper's handling of the material in "The King's Speech." It's a nightmare: too pretentious, too playful, too kidding, too clumsy. It's almost as if Mr. Hooper had, for the first time in his life, stumbled upon the variety of lenses and focus tricks that can be done with a motion picture camera and just let the creative monster in him come out without a leash on. There is nothing wrong with being inventive or clever, as long as there is a mind behind it. Mr. Hooper seems far less interested in his story than he does in tinkering around with lenses and oddball misc-en-scene.
The first appointment scene between Mr. Firth and Mr. Rush is really distracting, as the director stages his cameras so that the actors on the opposite side of the screen that we expect. Example: Mr. Firth is in the left side of the screen, looking to the edge of the lenses, which is just two inches from his nose. Vice versa for Mr. Rush. If this was intended to give a sense of awkwardness, it only worked in terms of how uncomfortable it made me feel watching the scene.
There are countless other distracting shots. Tracking shots upon a wall and back meant to convey a long stretch of time. Weird angles just showing off speaking equipment. Fish-eye shots of large crowds. All so pretentiously artsy, as opposed to creative in a controlled manner, that it really did wear me thin after a while. Had a more disciplined director been given the job, "The King's Speech" might have excelled from a perfectly-decent movie to an overall great one. Then again, many people would say that it has and in today's world, majority rules. So, what do I know?