YMMV / The King's Speech

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• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • One of the many doctors Bertie tries before going to Logue recommends the ancient method used by Demosthenes, of filling his mouth with pebbles (in this case, sterilized marbles) and then talking around them. Bertie's wife Elizabeth points out, reasonably, that this may have worked in Ancient Greece, but asks whether medical science has come up with anything better in the two thousand years since.
  • The same doctor (and several other doctors Bertie has gone to) encourage him to smoke to clear and relax his respiratory system. This seems ludicrous to modern audiences, but in fact the link between smoking and lung cancer wasn't established until the early 1930s, and since it was established by Nazi scientists working actively under Hitler's direction, their work was largely discredited and it took several decades for the rest of the world to replicate their findings.
  • For that matter, the real life Lionel Logue actually was ahead of his time in many ways when it came to things like the dangers of smoking and the psychological components of speech impediments that an unaware viewer might conclude the film made up to try to make him look better. The film actually changed the script shortly before shooting to work in elements from Lionel's recently-discovered diary.
• Broken Base: While there was a general, positive impression that the film would serve to increase support for real life stutterers, as well as the fact that it nailed pretty well how debilitating the condition can be (it was written by one of them after all), it is also true that experts and stutterers themselves don't entirely agree about the accuracy or lack thereof in the film's portrayal of the condition. A common criticism is that the film repeats the harmful myth that childhood trauma plays a big role in its origin, and therefore that catharsis is necessary to "fix" the problem, which others counter that the film fortunately still doesn't ignore that Logue's technical lessons are just as fundamental, or that he tests to determine if the problem is psychological rather than neurological before treatment.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The scene of Albert and Lionel bickering over St. Edward's chair — "People have carved their names in it!" — makes any scene featuring that chair, in any movie about British royalty (say, Elizabeth) automatically funnier.
  • Timothy Spall has a small role as Winston Churchill. Several years later, he was a major character in Denial, as the Neo-Nazi writer and Hitler's apologist David Irving.
  • Helena Bonham Carter would later play the Queen Mum's daughter Margaret in The Crown (2016), alongside Olivia Colman, who'd also played the Queen Mum in Hyde Park on Hudson, as Elizabeth.
  • In addition, Derek Jacobi, who plays Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang in this film, appeared in The Crown as David, formerly King Edward VIII, at the end of his life.
• Memetic Mutation: Bertie's Cluster F-Bomb speech has become this.
• Offending the Creator's Own: The film writer is a stutterer himself, but a good part of his own were upset with the way his story treats the condition, especially falling on several myths — and not any less because the film's portrayal of Bertie's progress unintentionally transmits the message than the problem can be easily solved with the right method or mindset (which is Truth in Television by some, but certainly not for others).
• One-Scene Wonder: George V doesn't get too much screen time, but damn, does Michael Gambon deliver a strong performance or what?
• Values Dissonance: Greater emphasis is placed on Wallis Simpson being a Nazi sympathizer than what really caused the crisis—she was an American divorcee who was still married to her next husband at the time.
• The Woobie: The premise initially sounds fairly humorous, until you watch the film and realize how much Albert's Speech Impediment — and the traumatic upbringing that caused it — has robbed him of the ability to express himself.

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