Saturday, February 10, 2007 - I remember getting up early one morning when I was in high school to watch "the" wedding. "The" wedding would be that of Lady Diana and Prince Charles. As young as she was at the time, I think maybe we grew up together. When she faltered, so did I, and when she struggled to be free, so did I, although in entirely different ways.

After first showing the election of 1997, where Tony Blair, played by Michael Sheen, won in a landslide for the position of Prime Minster, we get our first glimpses of the Queen, played brilliantly by Helen Mirren. She holds no respect for Blair, or his wife, attacking the way Mrs. Blair (Helen McCrory) curtsies to her, and chastising Blair for his lack of proper protocol.

Surprisingly, Prince Charles is seen to be the more human of the Royals, although that's not what we see in the press. Yet, the goal of the movie is exactly that, to allow us to see that what we see in the press is actually a well-orchestrated attack by a team of press secretaries and advisors. While the Queen's stance is that Diana wasn't even part of the Royal family anymore, as the divorce had been finalized a year earlier, Charles reminds his mother that Diana was also the mother of her grandchildren.

This is where I have to sing Helen Mirren's praises. Just as when I watched Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line last year, and didn't see a man playing Johnny Cash, but Cash himself, I never thought I was watching a woman playing the Queen. Mirren "was" the Queen. Likewise with Michael Sheen's portrayal of Tony Blair. It was very well-acted. The performance I didn't enjoy was that of Alex Jennings as Prince Charles. He seemed more concerned with trying to contort his face to look like Charles, than actually "being" Charles.