The King’s Speech (12A)

DENIED a best actor Oscar last year for his turn as a gay lecturer in A Single Man, Colin Firth can confidently expect to collect the goldplated statuette at the 2011 Academy Awards. His brilliant performance is at the heart of a commendably intelligent and well-executed royal tale that sheds light on a story – George VI and his stammer – that most of us knew little or nothing about.

Director Tom Hooper has shown a sure hand bringing the stories of real people to the small and big screen, including Brian Clough in The Damned United, US president John Adams in a mini-series, Longford (about the Lord’s relationship with moors murderer Myra Hindley) and Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren as the virgin queen. All the deservedly good things being said about Firth’s reluctant king shouldn’t blind us to not only Helena Bonham Carter’s plucky portrayal of his wife, the woman we know best as the Queen Mother, and Geoffrey Rush’s persuasive turn as speech therapist Lionel Logue.

This unorthodox Australian “doctor” is seen as a desperate last measure by Bertie’s wife Elizabeth after his first radio broadcast as the Duke of York proves an unmitigated disaster. His stammer robs him of every ounce of confidence.

Bertie and Logue form an uneasy relationship born of necessity as elder brother David (Guy Pearce) and a certain Mrs Simpson put the future of the monarchy in doubt.

The script by David Seidler, himself a stutterer, sketches in the political situation (although Timothy Spall as Churchill is a shock) as the royal family tries to cope with King David after Michael Gambon’s King George V dies.

Add a stellar British cast (Claire Bloom, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle to name but three) and The King’s Speech is already a frontrunner for best film of 2011.