The King's Speech Reviews
Platform
A conventional over-hyped picture lifted by unconventional fairly-hyped performances. Truly the m - m - most British movie ever made.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/10
CinePassion
The problem isn't the performers, but the waste of potentially interesting aspects
Slant Magazine
The King's Speech remains a decorous bit of middlebrow mush.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Top Critic
indieWIRE
Tom Hooper turns history into formula. Can poor Bertie gather the nerves to address his people when duty calls? Take a wild guess.
Projection Booth
A scantily used Rorschach device typifies the wasted potential here.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
MovieMartyr.com
The tone shifts, lamentably, from one buoyed by awkward comedy and very British charm to one that is more concerned with decorum and duty. What was a remarkably entertaining costume drama soon becomes a remarkable slog.
Full Review
| Original Score: 49/100
Cinemania
Every quality amounts to a big so what? for me.
Full Review
| Original Score: 56/100
Complacent middlebrow tosh engineered for maximum awards bling and catering to a nostalgia for the royalty we've never actually had to live with.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
A polite, occasionally rousing, and more often than not, boring affair.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Film Snobs
A stuffy melodrama tailored for the therapist acting-a-thon. A tragic combo.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Geekweek
I think it would be more effective on the stage, sans score and with only the implications of greater world events in the background.
New York Press
Each scene in The King's Speech is so poorly staged that its ineptitude sometimes borders on the avant-garde.
Boston Phoenix
The Madness of King George (1994) is a lot more substantive than this precious bid for kneejerk Oscars.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
ScreenRant
Despite the obvious movie structure that gets forced onto historical events, The King's Speech is a terrific film with great performances and an inspiring story.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Examiner.com
It's a wonderfully delightful film filled with great performances, particularly from Firth and Rush. This is one of the best films of the year and should not be missed.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Austin American-Statesman
It's refreshing to see a historical drama avoid grand gestures and sweeping melodrama in favor of smaller more intimate stories.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Honolulu Star-Advertiser
It is a rare movie indeed that successfully uses empathy rather than sympathy. We feel what the character feels, instead of feeling for them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Movies.com
This movie took me by surprise -- I had no idea that it that would be the most satisfying, affecting buddy movie of the recent past.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
What Culture
Hooper has teased out of the brilliant script and Oscar-worthy central performances an electric crowd-pleaser that borrows the best of Brit period cinema...while eliding the very worst.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
