2012 - LES MISERABLES or what are all these people singing about?

One of the strong points of Les Miserables is that it was written by a master story teller, Victor Hugo.  Hugo is remembered as the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Man Who Laughs and The Toilers of the Sea amongst others.  So now that we got that out of the way, this film is really bad.

Whoever had the lame brain idea of recording this cast of off key actors live clearly hadn't seen At Long Last Love.  Apparently no one remembers how well that film turned out.  After an hour and a half of listening to these out of tune actors trying to sing, I made my way out to the lobby of the theater to watch the theater staff munch on their Chipolte snacks which was a lot more interesting.

The non singing female cast of Les Miserables.

No one expected that Russel Crowe was the modern day Howard Keel so you get what you get with his singing.  The freakish ostrich necked actress Anne Hathaway who relentlessly campaigned for an Academy Award almost as soon as the film was released is barely in the film.  Amanda Seyfried who plays the virginal innocent Cossette can't even come close to carrying a tune and should probably stick to playing prostitutes.  Even the star Hugh Jackman who actually has some experience performing in musicals can't seem to cope with this low rent operatic music.

Poorly directed, drowning in computer graphic effects and unending soliloquies particularly in the last hour of the film.  This is probably the not unexpected result from Tom Hooper the director of the extremely overrated The King's Speech.  But in the end what's the point, both the play and the film are  extremely popular with audiences.

158 minutes.

2010 -THE KING'S SPEECH, there will always be an England especially in the movies

The future King of England has a bad stammer, he hires Professor Henry Higgins an Australian speech therapist to get over his stuttering.

Lots of good acting from a bunch of English actors in yet another story about the trials and tribulations of the poor Windsor family.  According to this film the fate of England rests on the ability of an Australian actor to cure the King's stuttering.  In reality, King George VI presided over the breakup of the British empire but that would hardly have been the heartwarming story all of us bloody commoners were waiting to see.

There's nothing especially bad about The King's Speech.  It has two very good actors in Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.  The photography is nice, it has some pretty scenery.  The issue is does anyone really care?

Well apparently a lot of people care because this film is a reasonable hit. This is the kind of respectable gush that everyone is comfortable giving awards to, a nice safe middle class film about their upper class betters.

To bad nobody broke out into "The Rain In Spain," during all those speech therapy sessions, at least that would have been worth a jolly good snicker or two. 

118 Masterpiece Theater minutes.