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100It's a fine, absorbing work, built with brilliance and without excessive showiness or flash. It feels, in fact, like a classic virtually upon its arrival.
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100Tom Hooper's terrific, Oscar-worthy film is not merely a spot-on period piece; it's also a heartfelt study in the shadings of courage, a film about duty and friendship that's often warmly funny and sometimes painful to watch.
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100Like Bertie's struggle, there's so much wonderment to articulate about this film that being mistaken for a stammering idiot is a risk. See it, then say it for yourself: The King's Speech is the best movie of 2010.
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100Engrossing and moving story of a alternately warm and combative relationship.
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100Under Hooper's deft direction, it packs the suspense of a thriller.
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100What we have here is a superior historical drama and a powerful personal one.
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100Old-school filmmaking at its best.
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100As the actor of the year in the film of the year, I can't think of enough adjectives to praise Firth properly. The King's Speech has left me speechless.
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100Despite being about a royal family at a critical moment in history, The King's Speech doesn't shout about its many strengths. Rather, it urges you to lean in close, where its intelligence and heart come through loud and clear.
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Dec 11, 2010100Think the blazing joys of "Chariots Of Fire" where the race is to the end of a sentence. Can it be that the British are coming?
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100The King's Speech is a magnificent movie treat, one of the very best pictures of the year.
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100A remarkable movie about a remarkable friendship. It honors the audience's intelligence, which makes it a double rarity.
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100No screen portrait of a king has ever been more stirring-heartbreaking at first, then stirring. That's partly due to the screenplay, which contains two of the best-written roles in recent memory, and to Mr. Hooper's superb direction.
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100It's the relationship between the two men that makes the film work: Geoffrey Rush's teacher cracking the quip, and Colin Firth so persuasive as the panicky king that by the time he gets to his crucial speech about going to war, you'll be panicking right along with him.
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100The King's Speech is a warm, wise film - the best period movie of the year and one of the year's best movies.
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100Let's say it without equivocation: Colin Firth deserves an Oscar for his lead role in The King's Speech as the stammering King George VI.
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95A direct and heartfelt piece of work. It's conventional, maybe, in its sense of filmmaking decorum, but extraordinary in the way it cuts to the core of human frustration and feelings of inadequacy, reminding us how universal those feelings are.
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90A host of British acting royalty, meanwhile, roams around the film: Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Claire Bloom as Queen Mary, Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill and so on.
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90It's a warm, richly funny and highly enjoyable human story that takes an intriguing sideways glance at a crucial period in 20th-century history.
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89It's a "keep calm, carry on" wartime melodrama of the first order, and stiff though it may be, it is never less than brilliantly done.
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88One of the chief reasons that director Tom Hooper's richly produced film works so well is because it operates on so many different levels. The King's Speech is all about layers, and Hooper keeps it humming on several at once.
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88Polished, thoughtful and touching.
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88The King's Speech is the epitome of prestige cinema, an impeccably crafted and emotionally compelling drama that deserves the many laurels it surely will receive.
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88Delivers solid drama with a rousing climax - a fully satisfying and uplifting period piece that achieves its dramatic potential without sacrificing historical accuracy.
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88The actors, predictably, are superb in roles shaped by screenwriter David Seidler, and directed by Tom Hooper. Yet they are unpredictably superb as well.
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88It's the kind of absorbing, attractive, unfailingly tasteful enterprise that a critic can recommend without caveat.
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88Two men alone create an epic landscape of feeling in one of the very best movies of the year.
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88Yes, The King's Speech is a lively burst of populist rhetoric, superbly performed and guaranteed to please even discriminating crowds.
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83The King's Speech is admirably free of easy answers and simple, happy endings; it's a skewed, awards-ready version of history, but one polished to a fine, satisfying shine.
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83Lest the audience miss a cue, Hooper and soundtrack composer Alexandre Desplat count on the ringing grandeur of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony - the famous second movement, no less - to amp the emotions.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 131 out of 144
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Mixed: 5 out of 144
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Negative: 8 out of 144
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