Somehow it goes without saying what The King’s Speech is. As a film, it has been praised beyond all measure, possibly to the point of creating world peace and allowing all people to unscrew pickle jar lids without asking someone else. It’s received countless nominations, including today, 12 oscar nominations. Oscar thought it was good too.

The issue I often have with such wide-ranging praise is that expectations are often raised to the point of people vomiting with joy and therefore it can never be as good as what people make it out to be. It’s almost as if there is an air of suspicion which hangs around like a bad smell.

The film opens on Prince Albert, played by that bloke who everyone likes from Bridget Jones’s Diary, the grand old Duke of York, son of King George V, brother to someone else, opener of jam jars etc etc… prepares to speak at the closing of the 1925 Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, with his wife Elizabeth (or the Queen Mum if we’re going to keep to explaining historical characters in detail, oh and she is played by an actress who once uttered in Fight Club “I’ve not been f**ked like that since grade school!” I’m not saying that is a bad thing.) by his side.

His stammering speech visibly unsettles the thousands of listeners in the audience, almost as if he was raping a cat right in front of a child, and a scene setting opener if you ever wanted one.

We then cut to some speech therapy in progress, in which after failing to do an impression of Marlon Brando from the Godfather by stuffing balls into his mouth and smoking, Albert says bugger it all and vows to do nothing further to sort out his problems.

Well that simply won’t do as far as the Queen Mummy is concerned, given that she is most upset be the whole affair, and goes to see Lionel Richie, sorry Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist who works in a basement, who says he can fix it all or your money back.

We cut to a wonderfully put-together scene which begins the journey designed to loosen the duke’s mouth in time for that work-expereince trip to Thailand down ladyboy lane, with the Duke being called Bertie, a shilling wager being placed, which would come up again later on, and the Duke reads Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” speech while listening to the latest bitchin hit from Radio 1 on headphones.

While that may seem silly, remarkably it makes sense later on and remarkably it was a very clever thing to try as it then gives Bertie the opportunity to progress on his way to being the excellent public speaker everyone wants.

But of course, not everything is quaint and royally wonderful as some scenes show us with King George getting a bit p*ssed at his son’s speech problem (probably seeing the father’s big beard didn’t help matters), the whole situation with his brother liking a complete bleep of a woman more than becoming King, and the sad fact that the duke never wants to be king anyway.

Over the course of the film, Bertie reveals some of the pressures which have led to the problems he faces now with his speech, with which Jeremy Kyle would have a field day. Through revealing these issues, Bertie and Lionel seem to develop a friendship that is quite genuine.

I suppose that it would have been too easy to dismiss this film as something to make money off the American audiences as they tend to love this royal bulls**t more than we Brits do, save for the forthcoming hysteria surrounding the royal wedding this year.

But there was some excellent characterisations being displayed here, which surely is in no small part to the acting, direction and dialogue. Though it’s often awful to use such phrasing, you feel drawn to the characters, which is a surprise given who they are meant to be. There was even some great humour to the whole affair at times, such as swearing inbetween sentences to keep the flow goingwhich offset the sombre story and there was a sense of gravity to what was happening.

However, for the record, Timothy Spall as Churchill. The way he wandered around on screen and talked, it was wrong to the point of parody, and they may as well got the f**king dog from the insurance adverts to play him.

There was a sense that things got a wee bit rushed through in order for it to make sense, but overall the timing’s and flow were bang on, and it was a great surprise.

So for once, the praise heaped upon The King’s Speech has been justified, which for a cynical snot like myself is not good as where’s the fun in saying something is good? I run on producing bile for god’s sake!

It actually is an excellent film with great performances by the cast, as well as an inspiring (though unfortunately I still think sometimes that the only way it would have been more inspiring is if he was fighting cancer and had no legs, and was doing it all for the love of a puppy) story about a man who not only finds his voice at last, but as we get told at the end, becomes one of the most important leaders in history. With the occasional f**k of course.