He spoke.

Rating: 8/10 (26 February 2011)

I did bring a lot of baggage to this movie, not least a conviction that another movie is way too good not to win the Best Picture Oscar, as well as a couple of savage takedowns by Christopher Hitchens for being an ahistorical, monarchist fairy tale. Of course, historical accuracy is not the greatest contributor to the quality of a film, and in fact, that _other_ film stapled some rather fanciful extrapolations on the bare skeleton of known facts, and came out pretty well for it.
So does The King's Speech, but less as a historical epic and more as something akin to a sports movie. The whole story is about how the future George VI overcomes a show-stopping stutter and manages to deliver a rousing speech at the outset of World War II that inspires the underfed British masses to fight Hitler on the beaches, and in the fields, and no, wait, that was a different guy. The King's own big speech came across as remarkably less memorable, unhelpfully pushed to the background by the man's straining features and the music, as it swelled with pride in the logopedic conquest. In fact, I barely caught a word of it.
But back to the sports movie analogy. Colin Firth sweats, gasps and bulges in various directions no worse than Sylvester Stallone, and in all seriousness, does deserve shiny trophies for his performance. So does Helena Bonham Carter, as a heart-breakingly supportive Elizabeth, Geoffrey Rush, as the wise but unorthodox speech therapist, and Michael Gambon as the inflexible, old George V. The costumes, sets and scenery are beautiful, with a couple of scenes coddled in impenetrable British fog looking especially good. The particulars are well-handled, the movie is touching and amusing and sad in the right places.
The achievement is somewhat diminished by the fact that from the first 5 minutes, it's possible to predict the entire thing. The football template is immutable: a protagonist who thinks he's destined to be a secondary character due to a lack of Faith In Himself. The woman by his side who will support him through his defeats. The genial mentor with an offbeat training routine. Sibling rivalry and a history of bullying as a child. Several setbacks on the way to the Big Game er, speech.
You will know when George will bungle his non-essential speeches. You'll see it coming when he initially refuses the "one last treatment," and what will happen to change his mind. You will hardly be surprised when he has a falling out with his therapist, or when the latter makes an attempt to reconcile that fails, or that a second attempt will succeed. You will positively yawn through the intrigue with his elder brother Edward VIII, Hitler's odious lickspittle. If you're going to stand history on its head and involve real people in imagined situations, why not make the plot a little less implacably canonical? Anyway, the king aces his big speech, and everything ends on a note of inspiring and hard-won triumph. Followed, off-screen, by a genocidal war that leaves two continents in ruins, countless millions dead and entire nations rendered mad with horror.
This movie is splendidly put together, but in five years, it will join the somewhat dusty procession of mannered tales of self-triumph and not really be thought about very much. The Social Network has all the energy this season. Every line spoken in that movie is on fire. Every scene is sharp and unpredictable. The King's Speech seems to be the favorite to win, but if there's any justice, it will be the more modern film that carries Best Picture.