The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to the multiple Oscar-winning Royal drama The King’s Speech.
The Butcher noticed that The King’s Speech is playing at this year’s British Film Festival, and after enduring a series of painful flashbacks to the release of this irritating slab of “Mother Country” monarchist nonsense, your humble keyboard jockey opted to put finger to key…or whatever the fuck it is that you say now that “pen to paper” doesn’t really make sense anymore.
There were lots of things that The Butcher hated about school: books, desks, classes, pens, teachers, the other students, school uniforms, big lunch, little lunch, detention, backpacks, blackboards, playgrounds, the school bus…the list could go on and on…and on…and on. The thing that The Butcher really, really, really hated about school, however, was homework. You spend six hours a day learning about all manner of crap and putting up with everything that school has to dish out, and then you have to go home and keep putting up with it? When a kid finishes work at McDonald’s for the day, do they then go home and make hamburgers? No? See, it just doesn’t seem fair, does it? Face it: homework sucks!
Homework, however, isn’t just restricted to school. In the world of movies, there is homework too. Cinematic homework is making yourself watch those worthy movies that you “just have to see.” It can be boring, must-see “classics” like Casablanca or Citizen Kane, or films that allegedly occupy an important place in cinema history, like The Battleship Potemkin or The Red Shoes. You know, basically any film that features in those wanky, 100 Movies You Must See Before You Die-type books. Heads up, people: if a critic opines that you just must see a film, there’s a very good chance that it will be shithouse.
The worst kind of homework movie, however, is the “blue ribbon” Oscar winner – think tedious sludge like Gandhi, Chariots Of Fire, and The English Patient. Firmly lodged like the stony nugget that it is on that supremely constipated list is 2010’s Best Picture Oscar winner, The King’s Speech. Stuffy, bone-dry, and apparently delirious on its own bloated self-importance, this dragged-out snooze-fest actually asks us to feel sorry for King Something-Or-Other (and with entitled creep and alleged sex-pest Andrew Mountbatten Windsor or whatever the fuck he’s now called in the news, the royals are hardly the most sympathetic bunch at the moment) – a stuck-up turd of mammoth proportions played by the perennially awful Colin Firth – just because he stutters. Big deal, pal! The Butcher will gladly take the stutter if it means having millions! With hams like the once-beloved-and-now-cancelled Geoffrey Rush and Helena “I’m so weird…look at me!” Bonham Carter in supporting roles, The King’s Speech is a teeth-grinding nightmare. Next time someone asks The Butcher if he loves it, he’ll be offering up the standard response: “Sorry teacher, the dog ate my homework.”
The King’s Speech is screening at The 2025 British Film Festival. Head to the official website for more information.
