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Given that the awards buzz for Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech started seconds after its first screening, you’d be forgiven for thinking the fact-based story of a British monarch overcoming a physical disability is an awards season special. Just add one widely respected but oft-overlooked actor and poof, instant Oscar. Mercifully, Speech’s approach is more down-to-earth than the capsule summary might imply. As the soon-to-be George VI, Colin Firth plays a reluctant royal, his anxiety amplified by the stutter that has dogged him since early childhood. With his father (Michael Gambon) ailing, Prince Albert, known to his family as Bertie, thinks he’s dodged a bullet. His wayward brother Edward (Guy Pearce) will ascend to the throne, and Bertie will live out his life in happy obscurity. Still, there’s that stutter, which acts up particularly around his domineering father, and grows bad enough for him to seek help from an offbeat Australian named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). A thoroughly emancipated colonial subject, Logue refuses to address the prince by anything other than his nickname, and rolls roughshod over Bertie’s attempts to rebuff personal inquiries. There’s no fixing his speech without the talking cure. It boils down, of course, to father-son issues, as well as a fear of failure that spikes when Edward abdicates to spend more time with his American divorcée lover. From there, you could practically finish David Seidler’s script yourself. The trick is that rather than relying on trumped-up dramatic catharsis, Speech boils down to a series of head-to-head confrontations between patient and therapist. Rush’s flamboyance is tempered by Firth’s muted sorrow, and his character’s gradual opening gives Firth a chance to push past the boundaries of his own interiority. As the future queen mum, Helena Bonham Carter mediates between them. It’s a small part, but a welcome return to nuance after years of Tim Burton collabs and Harry Potter screeching. The King’s Speech ought to be the kind of tastefully tasteless fare that gives real cinephiles hives, but it’s too thoughtfully constructed to be mere Oscar bait. —Sam Adams

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Official Site: www.kingsspeech.com

Rating:	R
Director:	Tom Hooper
Cast:	Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon, Geoffrey Rush, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, Max Callum, James Currie
Release Date:	November 26, 2010 (NY/LA), December 25, 2010 (Limited), January 14, 2011 (Limited)
Running Time:	111
Distributor:	The Weinstein Company
Genre:	Drama
Advisory:	for some language