a very late review for THE KING'S SPEECH by an Australian.

The King’s Speech

I was pretty skeptical coming into this film. I had heard about the positive reviews but it seemed like one of those Hallmark cum inspirational films about a man finding his voice for his country rahrah. This film could have been a turkey, if the directing hit the schmaltzy button and made a male version of a Mandy Moore film.

Surprisingly, it was really good.

Colin Firth totally owned the performance as the stuttering king with guts. He’s having a great run at the moment, with his acting performance in A Single Man and The King’s Speech being excellent. Thank God he’s moved on from wearing reindeer shirts in Bridget’s Jones Diary. I thought we had lost him forever to shit rom-coms:

OH LOOK, BITCHES I AM PAYING THE MORTGAGE, HERE.

Geoffrey Rush was also very good as the Australian speech therapist. He played the eccentric kooky doctor role well (think Robert Williams in Good Will Hunting) and kept asking the King for a shilling.

Surprisingly the rest of the cast, including Helen Mirren and Guy Pierce were only so-so. They were relegated to looking good in English period clothing and sexing American divorcees.

However, the best thing about the film was the interplay between the King and the commoner speech therapist. Initially the King was more antagonistic and bitchier than Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls, but eventually found a respect for the filthy colonial commoner to the chagrin of the whole English court. Rush and Firth really bounced off each other in some of the bitching dialogue.

In all, the film deserve the plaudits it’s receiving especially for the performances of Rush and Firth, who really played the film like a good old fashioned two hand play.