Solid But Unspectacular

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2011)

In opening, I must say that everyone involved with this production did a solid job. They all did their duty. In that sense, the movie resembles the British royal family as a whole - they're not especially important really, but they perform a useful function that fate has assigned them to. The trappings of monarchy aside, I suspect that their lives are probably rather dull and largely scripted. That brief description of royal life and duty sums this movie up perfectly.
There's really nothing wrong with it. Colin Firth was believable as King George VI, Helena Bonham Carter good (if, I thought, a little too irreverent in places) as his wife Elizabeth. George was the second son of King George V. As such, he was never supposed to be King, never trained to be King and afflicted with a terrible speech impediment that probably made him relieved to know that he would never be King, with all the public duties entailed with the office. Then - the abdication crisis, as his brother King Edward VIII gives up the throne for the woman he loves (the American divorcée Wallis Simpson) leaving poor Bertie (as George was known) to take up the reins and the responsibility of rallying the nation as Britain and its Empire slide toward inevitable war with Nazi Germany.
The movie begins with Bertie's disastrous and almost incoherent 1925 speech at Wembley and ends with a still hesitant but nevertheless eloquent speech declaring war on Germany in 1939. In between, the movie essentially deals with the speech therapy that Bertie received from the Australian Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush.) It isn't really all that interesting to witness almost two hours of speech therapy, but one has to feel a certain sympathy for Bertie as he faces this situation that to him must have been terrifying as well as a certain admiration for him - unlike his brother, he sucked it up and overcame his weaknesses and limitations and did his duty. Firth did an admirable job of drawing us into the King's emotional torment as he takes on this role he never wanted. So, while the movie as a whole isn't exciting or - at times at least - even particularly interesting, it's solid. I personally don't think it rises beyond that, and I think it's somewhat over-rated. But it's solid. Just like the royals themselves, it does its duty, even if it does so unspectacularly.