Very very unfair to Charles.

Rating: 6/10 (16 October 2006)

Stephen Frears has always been one of my favourite directors; he has made some of the best films over the past twenty or thirty years or so; his films on TV were good too and he has done a great job on this film  almost; and that's a really big almost! This family, the Royal Family, are almost impossible to take seriously; they walk around in kilts, play silly games and stalk stags when they should be facing up to the tragedy that has just entered their lives; to portray the royal family as it is portrayed in this movie is a plus for director Frears and the performance from Helen Mirren as The Queen will probably win her an Oscar with a nomination, at least, for Michael Sheen who plays Tony Blair.
After all this meticulous casting and care how did Stephen Frears allow some kind of Prince Charles impersonator to play Prince Charles?
The portrayal of Charles in this movie, both by the actor who plays him, the writer who wrote it that way and the director who let it be played that way is a disgrace; let us not forget who Charles is and where he came from; look at some of his biography on IMDb: 'In 1968, he graduated college, becoming the first heir to the British throne to graduate college. Later that year he was formally invested as Prince of Wales, a title he received in 1957. He dated many women, two of whom are Camilla Shand (later known as Camilla Parker-Bowles), and Sarah Spencer, the sister of his future wife.' 'His first military services appointment was in 1969. He currently holds the rank of captain in the Royal Navy and group captain in the Royal Air Force. His favourite food is scrambled eggs and he likes to drink whiskey. He enjoys going to Scotland, UK; Klosters, Switzerland; and the Eleuthra in the Caribbean. He enjoys hunting, shooting, fishing, polo, skiing, painting, writing and reading.' Does this sound like a man who 'thought he heard a shot' when a car back fired; does it sound like someone who would ask for 'extra protection'  as they say in the movie  because of that shot which got a big laugh at the intimated cowardly Charles on the night I saw it at the Arclight in Hollywood last week?
Did we really have to see the silly pulling of faces like the 'Spitting Image' puppets that portrayed him on Television and the bending of the mouth like a demented Frank Spencer? We have all seen footage of Charles standing next to the five feet ten Diana and being just under her height  she used to wear flat shoes when she was with him so as not to tower over him and we have seen Tony Blair stand next to George W. Bush; Blair stands one inch higher than the five feet eleven Bush; in this film Prince Charles is played about six inches taller than Blair  six feet six!!!!
This film could have been so good  in fact it was if you ignored the portrayal of Prince Charles, the fish fingers for Tony Blair's dinner (this is a sophisticated man whether you like him or not) and the Newcastle football shirt he wears around the house with his name on the back. There will be other films made of this period in the history of Britain's Royal Family and when it is played by people who don't necessarily look like the people they are playing maybe we will see it in a better light  rather like Helen Mirren's portrayal of Elizabeth I recently.