The King's Speech
Cutting right to the chase, I loved this movie. Great cinema. The fear going into a movie like this is that it could very well be very stuffy. After all, a lot of British movies are and even more British movies dealing with the Royal Family are. This one seemed as though it be able to avoid that trap but you can never be sure until you actually go see it. I guess the other pitfall would be that the movie would have folded under the weight of its own self-importance and expectations. It did seem right off the bat- from the moment I first heard of it- that it would be a good movie. It had the right pedigree: Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Geoffrey Rush, and Guy Pearce all in pretty substantial roles. The story at the outset seemed like a good one- certainly a triumphant one. Director Tom Hooper and company must have laid everything out on the table and known they had the potential to make a hell of a movie. The problem with all that is that sometimes the folks making these good movies get so wrapped up in showing how great they are- adding "subtleties" and fine details and the like- that they actually sink their movies. One example: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Only problem is the movie was so wrapped up in itself that it sucked.
Luckily, The King's Speech isn't stuffy or too bloated with self-importance or showiness. It's just a plain old great movie. No whistles or bells. Just great acting, great shooting, great scripting, and a fitting score to tie it all together. Great acting may, in fact, be an understatement. Colin Firth as King George VI (or for most of the movie, the future King George VI) is Colin Firth at his best. And that's really saying something. Firth was incredible in last year's A Single Man. He was also awesome in Love Actually and Pride and Prejudice (was that the A&E version or BBC?). He was also damn good in Bridget Jones' Diary. But he really outdid himself here. Ditto Geoffrey Rush- an actor I'm finding I really like. He just seems to get better and better with each movie I see him in... though again this- as speech therapist Lionel Logue- may be his peak. And yeah not to be too repetitive, but same goes for Helena Bonham Carter as King George VI's wife, Elizabeth. In short, each of these actors give a clinic on the art of acting. You want to be an actor? Take notes. Firth could have easily overacted. Rush could have veered into hammy-ness, and Carter could have blended into the background- nothing more than wallpaper to the rest of the movie. But they all nailed it. Pitch-perfect acting. In fact, it was more than that. These actors weren't acting but living their roles, becoming their characters in ways that other actors (ahem- Nicholas Cage and Kevin Costner-ahem) have never come close to. Just fantastic, fantastic stuff.
So yeah, it had the performances- including Guy Pearce as particularly douche-y King Edward VIII (yeah almost forgot, but big ups to Pearce too) - but in some ways, the script was the real star. Great script. Excellent dialogue. The verbal sparring match between Logue and King George was awesome to watch and listen to. Really, the movie was awesome on a lot of levels. I think one of the biggest compliments I can pay it is that despite knowing how it was going to end- I mean I'm not ruining it to say that the newly crowned King was going to be able to deliver the key speech his country could rally around- I wasn't bored at all. In many ways this is similar- a historical drama with a light tone- to The Last Station- only even better. This isn't bad company to be hanging around. Oh and to be crystal clear this movie was no Big Momma's House 3- thankfully (though I suppose that's not fair; I've never seen any of the Big Momma's House movie- but I'll go out on a limb and assume that this is a hell of a lot better than all three of these movies combined). No, The King's Speech was everything I look for in a great movie. Definitely glad I saw it.
Grade: A+
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