The Queen and I

As others here have said with such a cast it should have been so much better. Only for rainy afternoons when there is simply nothing else on... better to seek out the superb series The Windsors.

This film is meant to be comedic and it achieves that! Yes there is an underlying political statement but previous reviews have taken it too seriously... Lighten up enjoy life!

The book was first published around 1992/3, so quite what the point is of filming it 25 years later, I fail to see, and I wish whoever was responsible hadn't bothered.

Puerile jokes about Charles's ears, the (late) Queen Mother's fondness for horse racing, the (late) Princess Margaret's fondness for cigarettes and gin & tonic - it's all here, and it really doesn't work.

Now top off the whole sorry confection with references to the Princess of Wales still being alive and living abroad somewhere with Dodi Fayed and you start to see how crushingly unfunny and indeed irrelevant this is. It is truly awful.

I've tried to imagine how, or indeed if this might actually have been funny at the time it was written, when some of the characters were still alive and would have meant something to the readers, but I just can't see it.

Not even the excellent cast can save it - it is the biggest turkey of this Christmas.

If you've read the book then you'll be dying to see the film. Well don't. Apart from the annoying David Walliams the films a big letdown. Quite short and the actors haven't really been made up to resemble the royals. The book had so much depth and humour. This was made for kids. So you can see how much of a wet fart the film is by comparison. Perhaps see the film first the read the book.

I can only agree with the other comments here: It is situated 20+ years ago without any frame of reference to place the watcher in the time period. Many of the characters are now dead, and unknown to many watchers (Princess Margaret, Queen Mother) etc. Jokes about Princess Di dating Dodi Fayed are obviously not funny in hindsight. It portrays everyone in a nasty manner, 'the Royals' and 'the Poor' are equally shown to be lazy/backbiting/worthless people. Yuk. Yuk. Yuk. Watch the brilliant 'The Windors' TV series instead which pokes fun at today's Royals in a playful and very funny way.