Review: The Queen
My mother and I went out to the movies and saw The Queen tonight. It has almost left the theatres so this review comes a bit late, but it's worth seeing. It's about the royal family's reaction to the death of Princess Diana in the week leading up to her funeral and Tony Blair's attempts to convince them to make a public appearance and limit the PR damage they were incurring. The brilliance of the picture lies in the actors' abilities to mimic real public figures so believably.

Of course, my favourite scenes were the ones involving Blair's henchminions. The movie totally captured the organized chaos that is a high level political office in reaction mode, with people always running here and there, debating the impact of newspaper headlines and editing speeches on the fly. The only character who rang false to me was Alastair Campbell, Blair's communications director. I've read that the real Campbell was considered a bit of an arrogant twat, but I'm having trouble imagining any speech writer coming up with a remark like "Ha! You owe me for that People's Princess line." Coming up with good soundbites is a pretty major part of the job description of the communications director to a Prime Minister. A real life political boss would have just looked at Campbell quizzically and said "Er, yes, that's what your salary is for."

But overall, great movie. Worth seeing on DVD if you don't catch it in the theatres.