Compelling story let down by wooden acting

Rating: 3/10 (3 April 2016)

I sat down to watch this in the happy expectation I would enjoy it. It's a riveting story, a well- crafted film and with a screenplay that has its nuanced moments. But then it has its clunky ones too (e.g. " Tay Bridge? But that's the code-name for my funeral", as everyone else in the room knows full well). Much of the dialogue is laboured, and unlikely. The Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Mother and Prince Charles, all played by front-rank actors and actresses, come across as wooden mimics, and wholly fail to catch the personalities of the parts they are playing. One can always rely on Helen Mirren to redeem a questionable role, but not it seems here. As with the others she misses the essential spirit of the Queen's stoicism: good humour in the face of adversity. An upright posture and abrupt transition from misery to jollity does not capture it. Almost all the 'aristocrats' stiffly bypass what ought to be an easy ability to combine great formality with great informality, sensitivity with authority, humour with seriousness. The sparkle in the eye is replaced with dead stereotyping. Prince Philip is gauche, the Queen Mother a pantomime dame and Prince Charles is without personality at all. Michael Sheen comes close, but does not do Blair as well here as he has elsewhere. Helen McCrory has a good stab at Cherie, but takes it too far into the obvious, as does Mark Bazeley as Alastair Campbell. The only part that truly convinces is Roger Allam as Robin Janvrin, who glues the whole thing together with the effortlessness one would expect of the role. All in all a surprisingly disappointing film, that promised to be much better than, in the end, it was.