The title betrays all suspense

Rating: 5/10 (27 May 2019)

Simply by reading the title, one can figure out everything that will happen in this film. To be specific, it reveals that the narrative will center around the speech impediment, and also gives away the fact that there will be one epic well-delivered speech at the end. Sure enough, that was the case. My expectations from the title never faltered even a tiny bit.
I do not even attack the title, as it is perfectly fitting, even clever. It's the narrative that feels lacking. A speech impediment alone is not a strong enough narrative for a full feature-length film. One may argue that there was more: the "doctor", the throne, the father, the brother, the wife, perhaps garnished with a little of the "doctor's" family life as well. But these are certainly far in the background. If one were to remove the central narrative of the speech impediment, the rest would crumble.
Clearly, the director and writer chose not to make this a standard biopic or history film, given that I personally didn't learn much information about this man - and I'll shamefully admit I didn't know all that much about him going in either. This in itself is no terrible thing; not every single film about a historical era needs to be a three and a half hour David Lean biopic with the utmost accuracy and historical merit. It was a conscious choice, and not a bad one, to keep the narrative simplistic and not to tackle the entire era.
Indeed there is potentially still room for a strong film even with biographical and dramatic angles not taking on a strong focus. Perhaps the psychological angle could have been expanded upon more; all we really got out of that was showing that he spoke perfectly with loud music in his ears, and flirting with the linkage of his family troubles to making his speech even worse. These angles could have been developed more, but once again they stayed too obsessed and narrow-minded on their one single theme, making the film feel a bit hollow to trudge through.
Still, it wasn't all bad. Colin Firth's rendition of a stammerer was admirable, Helena Bonham Carter gave a convincing portrayal of the Queen Mother, and the whole irreverent yet warm character of Lionel Logue conveyed plenty of intrigue. The cinematography was stunning during the shot of Lionel and Bertie walking along the foggy street just before they parted ways briefly. Plus, the music of Alexandre Desplat is always a treat.
All in all, it's technically strong but had too weak of a motif and needed more themes to round it out.