The Kings Speech

‘The Kings Speech’ opens with King George V (Michael Gambon) asking his second son Prince Albert, the Duke of York, to deliver a speech at the 1925 British Empire Exhibition. The Duke (Colin Firth) is not the most confident of people, not helped by or possible the cause of a speech impediment and the prospect of public speaking simply terrifies him. He immediately becomes tongue tied in front of the crowd and stammers what words he can manage.



The Duchess (Helena Bonham Carter) takes her husband to see Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a speech therapist from Australia. A man with no academic credentials but one who comes highly recommended although with unorthodox methods. They have already tried many professional therapists without success.

Before he realises who his new customers are Logue suggests that if her husband cannot cope with public speaking then perhaps a career change might be in order... not really possible she admits.



Logue agrees to treat her husband but only under his own rules in his own office. He doesn’t do house calls he tells her, not even for royalty. He also insists on using Christian names, so a reluctant ‘Bertie’ is coaxed to his first appointment. It doesn’t go well and when Logue records him reading the famous opening lines from Hamlet, you know ‘to be or not to be’ and all that jazz, but whilst wearing headphones so that he can't hear his own voice, the Duke’s patience runs out and he storms off.

It is not until sometime later than the Duke plays the recording of this speech that Logue gave him and realises his reading was almost perfect. Oddly the headphones trick is one that Logue doesn’t reuse; although it probably leant itself perfectly to some of the radio work the Duke has to do later.

So the Duke goes back to Logue and his therapy continues, during which an unlikely friendship develops between the two.



If he thought being in the public eye as a Duke was bad, circumstances were about to make things a whole lot worse. His elder brother David (Guy Pearce), the heir to the throne and a much more confident person, is chasing the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Meanwhile, going on in the background is the build up to World War II. It’s all actually a nice history lesson and for once no one has seen the need to alter the past. So this film will educate many people who do not know the history of this period.

When his father dies, David becomes King Edward VIII but in less than a year he has been forced to abdicate making Bertie now reluctantly King of England and his first task is to face a very public coronation ceremony.



Then the weight of leading Great Britain into conflict is thrust upon him as Britain declares war on Hitler’s Germany and the King is required to broadcast live to the nation on radio.

Now if I was King and was handed a nine minute broadcast I’d have told them to reduce it in size or face a trip to the Tower. Nine minutes... no thanks, shall we do four? Or off with your head. I'm sure that's how Queen Elizabeth I would have done it.



It is a tension filled scene but Logue is there to coach him and thankfully it is a resounding success.

It is a true story that the screenwriter David Seidler had wanted to write for some time but when he first attempted it in 1981 he was thwarted. Lionel Logue's son would not let him use his father’s diaries without permission from Buckingham Palace. Permission was given in principle but King George VI’s widow, by then commonly known as the Queen Mother, insisted that it would not be done ‘in her lifetime’. Poor Seidler then had to wait another 30 years to write his script as she went on to live to be 101.

I was very impressed with some excellent casting; everybody looked like the real people they were portraying, right down to Prime Minister’s Baldwin and Chamberlain. Even Timothy Spall was near perfect as Winston Churchill and I can't help thinking comedy whenever I see Spall.

Colin Firth gives a performance for which he is certain to be nominated for an Oscar while Helena Bonham Carter was spot on as his wife but for me, it was Geoffrey Rush at his best as Logue who stole the show.

It’s a thoroughly entertaining piece of historical cinema that gives a fascinating insight into King George VI. Not only into the struggles he had with his speech but it also paints a picture of a man who never thought he would be King but, unlike his brother, he wanted to do his duty. He wasn't meant to be King, he wasn't groomed to be King nor was he particularly suited to be King but he did it and ultimately history shows that he did it well.

Sweeney Todd

Tonight it's 'Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street', which, half an hour before the start, they are queuing down the stairs to get into see. We go in the bar and wait for the commotion to die down and enjoy a pint of Legend.

Oddly Daughter has been against us going to see Sweeney Todd, although we've been struggling to understand why. I think it's something to do with her being a big Johnny Depp fan and this, because it's very violent, has been classified as '18' so she can't see it. So I think she expects us to wait four years until she is allowed to see it. With hindsight, it appears she's probably been tipped off about how dull this film is and was just trying to save us from it. We should have listened.

The story itself is pretty interesting. After being sent away for fifteen years for a crime he claims he didn't commit, Benjamin Barker returns to London with the help of a young sailor. Now calling himself Sweeney Todd he wants revenge on the judge who sent him away. He returns to his old barber shop where Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) now runs a shop selling 'the worst pies in London'. Todd believes his wife is dead and the judge now has his Daughter, Johanna as his ward. To complicate matters the young sailor he came home with, is trying to seduce Johanna, and wants Sweeney to help him in this quest.

Mrs. Lovett convinces Todd to resurrect his old barber shop and after a 'shave-off' with a chap called Pirelli, played eccentrically by Sasha Baron Cohen, he establishes himself as the best barber in London. This is one of the better moments of the film. Depp's shaving blade is a whir, almost as if reprising his role as Edward Scissorshands, as he wins the contest. I think there was supposed to be humour in the film but the only titter from the audience came at the hands of Baron Cohen during this screen.

His reputation established, Todd gets some customers but instead of give them a close shave, he slits their throats and Lovett uses their bodies to make her meat pies, which she then sells to her unsuspecting customers. The gratuitous throat slitting, and there is an awful lot of it, is overdone, there's too much ketchup and it's not very scary. We've seen it all before but the main problem with the film is that it's a musical but without any tunes or singers. The songs are all mundane, unremarkable ballads and everything is sung in monotone, so much so that a lot of it is unintelligible. Depp is clearly no singer and nor is Bonham Carter. The 'singing' ruined what could have been a good film because the film's 'look' was amazing. The sets of a grim London were very good, complete with rats. Which reminded me of something funny L read out in the paper this morning, that in London you are never more than five minutes from a Starbucks, or a rat.



So, perhaps if the music had been totally done away with it might have worked, but in this format, for me, it just didn't. The script was padded out with songs rather than with storyline. Right from the start the film was a long slog with little or no tempo to it. L was looking at her watch early on and I didn't blame her.

The best acting came from the ever excellent Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin. Although he appeared to be simply reprising his role as Severus Snape from Harry Potter, which I'm not sure was the intention. Then even he spoiled it by showing his lack of singing skills.

The most chilling scene was at the end, when Bonham Carter gets incinerated in her own oven, that bit was priceless.



Once it was over, the audience just got up and left in silence, hardly anyone commented on it, such was its lack of effect. All rather boring I'm afraid.