There are some interesting moments, but this account of British royalty in America leaves too much unexplored
Hyde Park on Hudson is a lavish but drowsy and underpowered movie that never quite clicks into gear: it's like a midsummer weekend's comedy with all the comedy removed, leaving behind a weirdly oppressive sense of inactivity and discomfort. Of course, this might well be a faithful approximation of the real event it describes. But it's odd all the same.
The subject is a visit made in 1939 to Us President Franklin D Roosevelt, at his country retreat in upstate New York, by Britain's nervous new King and Queen, Bertie and Elizabeth, hoping to secure American support for the imminent battle with Hitler. They are played by Samuel West and Olivia Colman, and Fdr is genially, if casually impersonated by Bill Murray, who looks the part but is sorely lacking the sharp material that...
Hyde Park on Hudson is a lavish but drowsy and underpowered movie that never quite clicks into gear: it's like a midsummer weekend's comedy with all the comedy removed, leaving behind a weirdly oppressive sense of inactivity and discomfort. Of course, this might well be a faithful approximation of the real event it describes. But it's odd all the same.
The subject is a visit made in 1939 to Us President Franklin D Roosevelt, at his country retreat in upstate New York, by Britain's nervous new King and Queen, Bertie and Elizabeth, hoping to secure American support for the imminent battle with Hitler. They are played by Samuel West and Olivia Colman, and Fdr is genially, if casually impersonated by Bill Murray, who looks the part but is sorely lacking the sharp material that...
- 2/1/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
King George VI and his wife return to the big screen in film about love affair between Us president Franklin D Roosevelt and distant cousin
The legacy of The King's Speech lives on: King George VI and his wife are to make a return to the big screen in Hyde Park on the Hudson, an adaptation of a BBC radio play, directed by Roger Michell. The production will be bankrolled by Film4, who apparently passed on funding The King's Speech in their eagerness to get this film about the monarch off the ground.
But there's no word on who will play the royal couple this time round, and indeed this time the characters are supporting, rather than the leads. The main focus of the story is the love affair between Us president Franklin D Roosevelt and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley, which comes to a head in June 1939, when the...
The legacy of The King's Speech lives on: King George VI and his wife are to make a return to the big screen in Hyde Park on the Hudson, an adaptation of a BBC radio play, directed by Roger Michell. The production will be bankrolled by Film4, who apparently passed on funding The King's Speech in their eagerness to get this film about the monarch off the ground.
But there's no word on who will play the royal couple this time round, and indeed this time the characters are supporting, rather than the leads. The main focus of the story is the love affair between Us president Franklin D Roosevelt and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley, which comes to a head in June 1939, when the...
- 3/30/2011
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
Colin Firth is the stuttering monarch and Helena Bonham Carter the future Queen Mother in a richly enjoyable drama. By Peter Bradshaw
Some films are known as "game-changers". This is not one of those films. It is a don't-change-the-game-er, or yet a jolly-well-change-it-back-er: a traditionally mounted, handsomely furnished British period movie, available at a cinema near you in dead-level 2D. Set in the 1920s and 30s, it is populated by that sort of well-suited patrician Englishman of yesteryear who drinks spirits in the middle of the day, whose middle and index fingers are rarely to be seen without an elegant cigarette interposed, and who pronounces the word "promise" as "plwomise" (try it).
Written by David Seidler and directed by Tom Hooper, The King's Speech is a richly enjoyable, instantly absorbing true-life drama about the morganatic bromance between introverted stammerer King George VI and his exuberant Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue:...
Some films are known as "game-changers". This is not one of those films. It is a don't-change-the-game-er, or yet a jolly-well-change-it-back-er: a traditionally mounted, handsomely furnished British period movie, available at a cinema near you in dead-level 2D. Set in the 1920s and 30s, it is populated by that sort of well-suited patrician Englishman of yesteryear who drinks spirits in the middle of the day, whose middle and index fingers are rarely to be seen without an elegant cigarette interposed, and who pronounces the word "promise" as "plwomise" (try it).
Written by David Seidler and directed by Tom Hooper, The King's Speech is a richly enjoyable, instantly absorbing true-life drama about the morganatic bromance between introverted stammerer King George VI and his exuberant Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue:...
- 1/7/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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