The King's Speech

Film: The King's Speech
Director: Tom Hooper
Country: UK

The story of the film is very simple. Prince Albert, son of the King of England, has a severe stutter. In his position as Prince and as Duke of York, he has to do lots of public speaking. He has to overcome his stutter, and the traditional methods aren't working. His wife finds him an unconventional speech therapist known for 'Controversial' methods, who insists during the sessions they see each other as equals, because he says it's essential to his technique. Later on when his father dies, and his brother abdicates so he can marry a women who's been divorced, he becomes King. At this point, the Nazis invade Poland and England declares war on Germany. The nation is looking to him to reassure them and lead them through this conflict, so he has to overcome his stutter.

Speaking as a person who stutters, the depiction of stuttering is very accurate. No problems there. The problem with the film is that the approach is very generic and formulaic. The whole story is choreographed from the moment you meet the speech therapist. He talks to the Prince like an equal, insists on calling him 'Berty', and you know right away that Albert is going to gradually accept this as his speech gradually improves. They milk the class irony angle a whole lot, at one point with the psychiatrist charmingly sitting on an ancient throne, and replying to Albert's objections with 'It's just a chair'. But other than those scenes that charmingly make light of royalty, nothing seems very specific to Albert and his particular situation. You could take eighty percent of the script and make it about anybody with a stuttering problem just by filling in the blanks differently. Replace the scenes where he's working on his stuttering with some other semi-psychological problem, and the only other script changes you'd need to make would be to replace the stuttering references. It's like they took a template 'Overcoming adversity' script and mad-libbed it to be about Prince Albert's stuttering problem.

Also, maybe I took issue with this because I'm American as opposed to British, but I feel like they inflated the importance of the post-Victorian British royal family. About an hour and a half into the film Albert, then 'King Charles VI', comments that he's a king that doesn't have any actual political power. Except for that one moment of the film, you'd think it took place in the Tudor era and that the king was head of government. They then heavily implied that the psychological health of the entire nation was tied directly to the king's ability to speak properly. Maybe I just don't understand because I'm not British, but it felt like they did that to artificially add weight to the drama.

Colin Firth's performace as Prince Albert was very good, and the rest of the cast filled their roles well enough. The script was very efficient and workmanlike, entertaining with no serious flaws. The King's Speech, overall, is a very competent film, and though it strictly adheres to the 'Overcoming adversity' formula, it does so very well. It's a pleasant, smart film I'd recommend to people who liked films such as An Education and Slumdog Millionaire, but not to people who like blockbuster films, or to people who like more eclectic art films.

Style: 4
Substance: 6
Overall: 5
Accessibility: 8