Film review: The King's Speech (12A)

After hitting upon such a perfect movie title which is at once pitch, climax and obstacle, there was a danger that the actual movie would fail to match its precision.

But this true, touching and intelligent tale excels in almost every department and has found, for Colin Firth one of those rare "born to play" confluences that suggest all such Firth-like combinations of haughtiness and melancholy were merely apprenticeships for this king of roles.

While physical impediments - in this case a stutter - are Route One to the golden statue, this portrayal of a reluctant royal is much more nuanced.

The mix of high born arrogance and childish helplessness, the irascible pomposity mixed with gut-wrenching fear, the grand and the humble and the cruel tricks of a tripping tongue ensures he mainlines empathy from all but the most toxic republican.

Prince Albert had the misfortune to be at the epicentre of the greatest royal crisis of the century when, second in line, he watched his playboy brother abandon the throne for the love of Wallace Simpson as the storm clouds of world war gathered.

At a time when the country needed a steely leader and a reassuring voice, the substitute king evoked only pity and dismay.

Firth's Bertie is blessed and cursed. Cursed by his station and a sense of his own inadequacy. This internal wrangling finds voice - or rather doesn't - in a stutter which acts like strangling hands around his neck.

Bertie's blessings are in the company he keeps. Helena Bonham Carter puts flesh on the caricature of the old Queen Mum, strong, supportive with a common touch yet dismissive of the wrong sort (in this case, the flighty, flirtatious Mrs Simpson).

His saviour comes in the highly eccentric workings of roguish Lionel Logue (a glint-in-his-eye Geoffrey Russell) who has the stiff-upper-lipper swearing, singing, rolling and lolloping to force out the words as if they were fistfuls of phlegm on a congested lung.

It is their unlikely friendship that is the emotional core of the story and, though turbulent and furious at times, it is tender; the older man offering a fatherly friendship to one denied familial warmth by duty and the crown.

It is voguish to look for cultural resonances and here, whether by chance or design, they are plentiful. The qualities of perseverance, courage, resilience in the face of austerity and conflict have been in mothballs for a while but are needed once more

And while one would not wish Bertie's cold, cruel oppression and stifled reserve on anyone, the Keep Calm And Carry On generation does seem preferable to the lachrymose incontinence of the current crop of celebs who seek to claim our admiration.

– From January 2011