King meets Speech therapist..King loses speech therapist.King finds speech therapist again

Rating: 6/10 (27 January 2011)

"The King's Speech" is a small,low - budget British film with showy performances by its two principals that have swept it from being a success d'estime to a success de cash in very short order.It is not a great film.It is cinematically uninteresting but competently made.Apart from the larger than life acting of its principals, most of the other cast members resort to mere mimcry.Mr Spall is particularly guilty in this respect,offering a Churchill that would have been rejected by BGT judges as being OTT. Much like the earlier "The Queen" which was similarly over rated,the story involves Britain's favourite dysfunctional family,the Windsors - or the Saxe - Coburg - Gothas as they were known until the Great War made a change of name propitious. Bullied by his father King George the Fifth,treated with amused disdain by his older brother the Prince of Wales,shy and diffident and afflicted with a shattering stammer,the Duke of York seems destined to perform the usual role of the Sovereign's second son (the "Spare" of the heir and a spare)and live relatively quietly in the shadow of the more senior Royals.However,destiny in the shape of an American divorcée of doubtful reputation was to change his future,his brother's future and indeed the future of his country. The Prince of Wales obsession with Mrs Wallis Simpson as we all know led him to forsake the throne,embrace Fascism and happily leave Britain in its worst constitutional crisis for centuries. "Bertie" as he was known to his family,never expected to be King nor ever wanted to be King;certainly not until he saw the awful mess his brother was making of the job. And then there was the little matter of his stammer which he had been battling against for years,sometimes taking a step forwards then two steps backwards,latterly under the care of Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue. Logue had fallen out of favour but the new King finally recalled him as first the Coronation approached and then war clouds began to gather. Ultimately Logue was able to see the King through his first speech to the country as a war leader. Mr P.Firth has been rightly lauded for his respectful and affectionate portrait of a stubborn and courageous monarch.Without resorting to impersonation he brings a good man to life recognisably to someone like myself who remembers the latter years of his reign. Mr G.Rush is equally good as Lionel Logue,gentle,sly,compassionate and equally as stubborn as his famous patient.The film is poorly paced and,frankly,has only reached its present eminence due to a noisy and persisting lobbying by its supporters.