Royally Tongue Tied

At it’s heart, director Tom Hooper's  "The King’s Speech" is an old-fashioned buddy movie. The Duke of York, second son to King George V, is not expected to become king, and thankfully so, because he is afflicted with a stammer. On the other hand is Lionel Logue, an Australian immigrant and speech therapist, an eccentric who loves Shakespeare and has odd ideas about how to cure his patients.

The film bears all the trappings of a typical, Oscar-bait, Masterpiece Theater-type entertainment. It’s exceedingly British, with all the costumes and sets that that entails. We have locations like Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Balmoral, along with the muted photography by Danny Cohen, perfectly represent the 1930s time period. But what raises the film above all this is the human emotion that bubbles to the surface thanks to a perceptive script by Danny Seidler, and two first-class performances from Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.

Firth, who might as well compose his Oscar speech now, manages to navigate the tricky part by presenting the Duke as an underdog determined to rise to the challenge yet frightened that if he fails, the whole country could be lost to the charismatic Hitler.

Rush has an easier part, technically. He has all the good lines and Rush, given some shading by Seidler’s script, brings the man to life. We get a key scene when he auditions for Richard III at a local theater group and is basically insulted for being too old and too Australian.

The third piece in this film is Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth, the Duke's steadfast wife who was beloved by the public and is portrayed as the pinnacle of the British stiff upper-lip. the role maybe underdeveloped but Bonham Carter is eminently likable in the role.

Also making small but effective appearances are Michael Gambon as the old king, Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop of Canterbury and Guy Pearce as older brother David, the abdicated king, who is a largely reviled figure in history, but Pearce, along with the script, cuts him some slack (there are a few veiled references to his Nazi appeasement).

The film's climax is well known history but Hooper manages to invest the scene with a great deal of well-earned pathos.