Thanks, I Hate It: The King's Speech

Tom Hooper doesn't really make movies so much as calculatedly inoffensive hagiographies of people whose family owned half the planet in recent memory. There's so much that's morally repugnant about giving a multi-million-dollar blowjob to the memory of a man who, at the time, was one of the foremost political powers in the world that I'm not even going to attempt to tackle it here. Suffice it to say I'm curious just how many young Indian men with stammers died so that George VI could live in the lap of luxury with nothing more pressing to worry about than a public speaking engagement.

This is a movie about Colin Firth being primly outrageous in a stiff, mannerly way while Geoffrey Rush is outrageous in a slightly earthier way. There's nothing to it beyond that. It is competently made. Hooper has a good eye for beautiful rooms and open spaces. He shoots dilapidated studios as well as he does Lancaster House. Maybe better! The film's pleasures end there. The rest is like watching paint dry in an empty laundromat while Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" blares from every conceivable direction, commanding you to feel some big stirring emotions, damn it.

Why make this movie? It's a crowd-pleaser, I guess, and it was critically and financially successful. It's the kind of film that armors itself against criticism by shooting straight down the middle of every conceivable aisle, presenting its empty messages and trite relationships with mild and well-lit competence. The stuff between Rush and Firth, a lot of both men shouting swear words and of Firth getting flustered by how impudent Rush is, is a species of charming, I suppose. The interactions between the royal family and Logue's (Rush) lower-class household, as thoroughly odious and boot-licking as anything I can imagine, certainly make the two men on their own more palatable. 

The King's Speech is like a movie about FDR learning to cope with the ravages of Polio but which never addresses Japanese-American internment. It's a heartfelt love story about Ronald and Nancy Reagan where nobody once says "AIDS". It's like a PSA reminding theater-goers that hey, the richest and most powerful men on the planet are people too. Its visual merits only make me hate it more, because if there's anything I despise in this world it's turning genuine talent and artistry toward the maintenance of the status quo.