The King's Speech
Director: Tim Hooper
Review/Critique: To stay interesting and engaging while remaining faithful and believable, I see this as the biggest challenge facing any long form story based on real events. This is especially true for a story as seemingly tame as "The King's Speech." Although I of course expected the movie to succeed at keeping me engaged throughout, due to its popularity, I had doubts about how realistic it would feel in comparison to its real world counterpart; however, as a movie based on real events "The King's Speech" is an absolute success. I figured there was no way a film with as straightforward a plot as "a man helps his King learn to overcome his speech impediment" could grip me without pushing the boundaries of believability, but this film managed to do so incredibly well. It has its fair share of "Hollywood moments" that stuck out even moreso because of how non-hollywood the rest of the film was, but for the most part it feels like a pretty loyal adaptation of the real world events on which it is based. Still though, loyalty does not always pay off when it comes to likability, and unfortunately there are many things about this film that keep me from liking it as much as I could have.
See even though the movie has a lot to like, it just lacks a lot of things that generally make me fall in love with a movie. Historically accurate stories don't generally capture me like fictional ones for starters, so this movie was playing against a stacked deck. Part of the reason for this could be that I feel older movies tend to wash out their colors to indicate to the viewer that the movie that they are watching is old, although it is very possible that old school World War II England just looked that bland and industrial. To build off this as well, the old school English personalities on display did not jive with me either, although that's more a problem with the movie needing to stay faithful than it is any fault of the actors or screenplay writers since the dialogue felt well written and the performances were phenomenal. Even though the character's goals and motivations come across incredibly well, I can't help but feel that most of the characters in the film are not all that interesting. They aren't horribly uninteresting, and it isn't even a fault of the film to not develop them more, I just really prefer films that go deeper into the intricacies of the characters within them. It's not by any means a requirement of a film to be good, just a personal preference that I tend to have.
I guess this is all to say that this movie was not my particular cup of tea. I'm not saying it's flawless by any means, but many of the problems I had with it personally were just that, personal problems. I love how well crafted the story is in making the characters feel believable when comparing them to their real world counterparts, to the point that even through all their flaws you can't help but root for them to succeed. It also blows my mind how amazing a job Colin Firth does in replicating the real King George's speech, and the acting from the other members of the cast is nothing to scoff at either. The movie itself was incredibly good all personal preferences aside, the acting, the score, the directing, all of it was absolutely quality. I had my problems with it like that it being based on a true story made the scenes that were a bit more Hollywood stick out like a sore thumb or how the characters could've been fleshed out quite a bit more than they were, but for the most part it would not surprise me if this was a five out of six or even six out of six movie for some people. For my tastes though, it gets a four out of six pretty handedly.
Recommendation: Of all the recommendations I have given up until this point, this one right here may actually be the easiest to give. I recommend this movie to anyone who tends to lean more towards the non-fiction side of the film watching spectrum. As well anyone who likes political dramas, or strong underdog stories would absolutely love this movie. If that describes your taste in any way, please check this film out. If not, as long as you have some level of patience in your viewing experience, I think you will still quite enjoy this film.
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And that's my review for The King's Speech!
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