Culture

No director credited, (2/5).
You can't blame a guy for trying to cash in on The King's Speech. The film was massive, winning an awful amount of awards. It doesn't take a movie mogul to realise that the real-life “spinoff “ could make a serious quick buck, especially amidst the recent royal wedding hype. You'd only need to splice together some archival footage and a few filler interviews, mix in a touch of Colin Firth, and voilà! You'd be holding a totally marketable documentary. It's just too bad that marketable and entertaining aren't always the same thing.
 
King George VI: The Man Behind the King's Speech tells the life story of King George VI of England. If you've seen The King's Speech (or know your twentieth century history), there's really nothing new presented by this documentary. Colin Firth makes a short appearance, but once you get past the movie plugs, the film is nothing but some old newsreels and a few ho-hum interviews. It's not exactly gripping stuff. Worst of all, the documentary seems to have been extended from a shorter TV-friendly format, and there's just not enough archival footage to fill the extra twenty minutes. This means there's a lot of repetition.

At a technical level, things aren't much better. You get the feeling the producers skipped a little too much Documentary-Making 101 back in film school, and, while they were getting high at the beach, missed some vital lessons. The Man Behind the King's Speech is noticeably shoddy, especially in the sound editing department.
 
It's not all bad, however. The newsreels do show some interesting footage of the king's wedding and funeral, as well as some adorable shots of Queen Elizabeth when she was a cute little princess. The abdication of King Edward VIII is given a lot more screen time here than in The King's Speech, and this definitely is one redeeming feature of the documentary. If Tom Hooper wants a King's Speech follow up, the love story of Edward and Wallis Simpson would be a brilliant choice.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend making any effort to see this documentary. It really doesn't present anything you couldn't easily find on the internet. It was promoted as “remarkable”, but The Man Behind the King's Speech falls seriously short of the mark.