Decent

Rating: 9/10 (25 February 2012)

The Queen as seen here and imagined with enthusiasm by Morgan is not as witty as Alan Bennett's Queen, in her last on screen recreation, in A Question of Attribution (directed by John Schlesinger, 1992), nor does the estimable Ms. Mirren (who's nonetheless very fine) have the buoyancy of Prunella Scales in Schlesinger's film. But she is witheringly cold toward Tony Blair, all foolish smiles on his first official visit to the Palace. (Blair's played by Michael Sheen, who's experienced at this game.) As Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian, "Mirren's Queen meets him with the unreadable smile of a chess grandmaster, facing a nervous tyro. She begins by reminding him that she has worked with 10 prime ministers, beginning with Winston Churchill, 'sitting where you are now'. As put-downs go, that's like pulling a lever and watching a chandelier fall on your opponent's head." Fully recognizing the crucial importance of the British monarchy, this film is tartly reserved about both sides of the game. The royal family don't like "call me Tony." And Blair's wife Cherie is a bit ungainly in her blatantly anti-monarchy attitudes. But when Blair sees how Elizabeth's coldness and invisibility is angering the fans of Dady Di – the media queen, the "People's Princess" -- alienating her own subjects en masse, he steps in and persuades them to leave Balmoral and look at the thousands of flowers for Di piled in front of the Palance with their humiliating notes; then deliver a "tribute" to Di on TV. The formal grandeur of the film inherent in its subject matter – the Prime Minister and the royal family – is offset by its ironies and by the intimacy of the tennis match that develops in communications back and forth by telephone.