The Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews
About George the VI assuming the throne when his brother abdicates, his personal struggles with shyness and a stutter, and the speech therapist who helped him overcome it all and Do His Duty.
I must digress. As some of you may know, Mr Otter is a writer. Some of you know that he has lately been writing plays and hanging out with other playwrights. What you may not know is that he has been writing plays a long, long time. And in the early 90s, he wrote a full length play based on pretty much the same events that this movie is based on.
And it was really good. He read it to me several times, and we even had friends over for an actual staged reading of it. So I heard this play, in part or in whole, many, many times.
Fast forward a LOT of years. This movie comes out. Everyone is talking about it. And I was so, been there done that. Because Mr. Otter is a VERY GOOD WRITER. And I seriously didn’t think that even seeing yummy Colin Firth would make this story any better than what I had already heard.
Now, we chez Otter have some friends who have recently turned into our Movie Buddies. And this was the first time we got together. Doug wanted to see this, they had it, we invited them over. Don’t worry about me, I said. I’ll start it and when I get tired of watching it, I’ll check out and read or something.
So the MBs came over with it. And we talked and ate. And then we started watching the movie. Which I watched all of, for two reasons:
- It’s REALLY REALLY GOOD. Duh. This is what everyone had been saying about it, but I still thought, been there done that. But
- Although it’s the same people, events and time period, the focus of this movie is completely different.
Mr. Otter’s play was about George VI rising to the difficulty of being king, and actually went on into WWII. This movie is really about the relationship between the aforesaid king and his voice coach, Logue, and only takes the action through the crucial radio speech at the beginning of the war.
And it was DAMN GOOD. I was riveted. Everyone in the movie was excellent, the period detail was right on, and the acting (especially Firth and Geoffrey Rush, who played Logue) was a joy to watch.
So even if you were there for Mr. Otter’s play, go see this movie too. They are each excellent in their own ways.
