King's Speech, The

Aroview: Justly acclaimed tale of King George VI, his nervy, impromptu ascension to the throne and the speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch become worthy of it.

Seemingly, one of those stories so tailor-made for cinema you wonder why it wasn't filmed before, this is an effortlessly classy effort that offers the best of British period film pedigree to a wide audience, and was unsurprisingly knighted with a Best Picture Oscar. Firth's performance avoids the cliched mannerisms of the speech-afflicted, and he convinces here as a fallible, insecure man who is both empowered and constricted by his regal conditioning, while Geoffrey Rush brings an affable commoner's touch and with it an Antipodean informality that is at once threatening and disarming. An unadulterated pleasure.

Oscar - Best Picture

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