The King's Speech Review

Welcome to my second review of my Oscar marathon (Ending the 27th of February)! For my second review, I'll be reviewing last year's winner, The King's Speech. Enjoy:

The King's Speech is not the best film of the year, but it's still a well acted, well directed, and overall great film. It really keeps you interested in the characters and story, and it has a memorable quality to it. It's not perfect, but it mixes sophistication with entertainment very well. The story is about George VI, played by the wonderful Colin Firth. After his father, George V, dies, George VI is crowned King of England. The problem with this is that is George VI has had a speech impediment all his life, and as king, he has to make important speeches publicly. So, as the country is at war and in need of a leader, his wife arranges for her husband to see a speech therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush. I won't say anymore, as I just described the first half hour right there. So yeah, the plot is really simple, which can actually be one of this film's downfalls. The films accomplishes so little in such a long time, and even though that often leads to more atmosphere and character development, which it does here, it leaves time to be bored, which is a flaw. The characters are hit and miss. The 3 main characters, George VI, the speech therapist, and Queen Elizabeth are all very well done, but the rest of the characters are uninteresting and most of them seem pointless. However, most of those characters only get about 2 minutes of screen time, as most of the screen time involves the 3 main characters, so it's not much a problem, so I'll let it slide. The acting is... hard to explain. Most of the actors do good, but not great. Helena Bonham Carter, who plays one of the three main characters, Queen Elizabeth, also did good, but not amazing. Nobody does bad, but only two people actually do amazing, and I think they were the best actors of 2010, Colin Firth, and, especially Geoffrey Rush. Colin Firth get's a lot of emotion across, make his character feel like he's not Colin Firth, but his character, George VI. Also, the best of the movie, if not the best of the year, Geoffrey Rush. He's so interesting and when you watch the film, you don't see Rush, you see the speech therapist character. That's how good he was. Now, it's time for "The Best and Worst of The King's Speech". Even though it's obvious Geoffrey Rush was the best part about this film, I already described how good he did, so, to bring up something I didn't mention yet, the best is Tom Hooper's direction. He really knows how to keep us interested in such a simple plot as "A guy trying to speak in front of people", and he does it well. With awesome cinematography and camera work, Tom really brought light to a simple concept. The worst, in my opinion, is that, for a film that act's very important and even won Best Picture, it really isn't that revolutionary. This wouldn't be a problem, but if you're going to make a film that acts like it's a modern classic, it doesn't introduce any new and interesting ideas. Even films like 127 Hours and Black Swan, film's you'd expect to be similar to other films of the past, introduce new ideas that you'd like to see in other films, but this film doesn't do that. So, what's my final opinion of this film? It's flawed, I know that, but it's very entertaining, very memorable, very atmospheric, and with 2 of the best performances of the year (Though James Franco would argue), this is a great film. Worth the watch any day, just don't expect the best film ever. 

4/5