Considerably over-rated, but a good film

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2010)

I should start off and say that this is not a bad film. I enjoyed it, about as much as I enjoyed Tron Legacy, which is to say it's a pleasant way to spend your afternoon, if you have nothing else important to do that day.
And I should commend the director for his public commitment to historical accuracy. So many filmmakers think they're smarter than history, and proclaim themselves geniuses for inventing this and deleting that, but it takes a true talent to take what actually happened (to the degree anyone can know) without making it boring or confusing on the screen.
The last of my praises should go to Colin Firth, who I didn't even recognize in the role.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from being set in the 1930s. Its biggest fans are those with the blue hair, who are reliving their childhoods, a time of war and uncertain futures. Everyone knows how the film is going to turn out. The thrill seems to be mostly about identifying various cameo appearances: "Ooh, that's Churchill!!1!1!!" they shout (you can almost hear the "1"s).
What the story lacks is character. The king-to-be describes himself as a naval officer rather than a king, but we never see him doing anything remotely naval-ly, and it's just a little hard to believe this man would be given a command of anything more important than his own hat. What are we to make of this? The man also describes his childhood, but it's never shown to us in flashback, so we don't really get the emotion of it. That would have helped, as apparently this is meant to be the origin of his stutter. Last, he apparently managed to marry someone and reproduce. It's not believable. Obviously, it happened, but we deserve to know how. Who would marry someone so totally incompetent? She did say she didn't want him to have the throne, but I imagine being a royal relative, even without the throne, comes with all sorts of perks.
As for the end, it's completely predictable, and not just because of history. I could hardly spoil history, but I checked the spoiler box anyway. The speech therapist is thanked. The "I helped the royals" genre always ends this way. We're always supposed to be so moved that a royal would dare to acknowledge a positive feeling for someone. It's like a little victory for the audience, over the royalty. Whether it's Elizabeth, Elizabeth: The Golden Age (both also with Geoffrey Rush) or The Queen (2006) or Mrs Brown, we've seen it time and again. Even Babe ("that'll do, pig") and Return of the King ("you bow to no one") are variants of this genre.
The worst part though is that it's extremely difficult to get excited about a man reading a speech. He's not even making a speech, just reading it, with help. I suppose the ordinariness of it is supposed to be moving, but it just isn't. All the tension disappears from the film with the first visit to the speech therapist, where a voice recording is made. Right there is the solution to all the problems. Rather than hiding away in a separate room to force out the speech, he could simply have recorded the speech (without the odd gaps) and played back the recording. In a pinch, he could skip the recording altogether, and simply use the headphone music as he spoke.
Anyway, do see the film, but don't expect it to be a masterpiece.