The King review: Shakespearean fop idols aid search for teen hits

Charlotte O'Sullivan11 October 2019

Question: how do you make a ​fighty slice of English history a must-see for young girls? Answer: by casting two teen idols in lead roles and making said idols look especially young and extremely girlish.

Netflix’s latest wheeze is sort of inspired by Shakespeare’s Henriad plays. As the film tracks the emotional growth of reluctant royal and pulchritudinous peacenik Hal (Timothée Chalamet) the film’s hair and make-up team have a ball. Chalamet has always had something of the young Elizabeth Taylor about him, but with his black hair bobbed, then cut into a gamine crop, he’s the spitting image of the actress in Ivanhoe. Meanwhile Robert Pattinson (as the Dauphin) channels the spirit of Nastassja Kinski circa 1984.

What of Shakespeare’s language? That’s gone. Once Hal stops acting like a skinny goth and gets to grips with being a careworn monarch, he says things like, “Stop the f***ing charade!”

Loyal, earthy squire Falstaff (Joel Edgerton) is still around, but he’s no longer an embarrassment to his Maj. In fact, they’re quite the team and spend most of the movie proving everyone around them wrong (though there’s a twist which rather neatly undercuts their achievements at Agincourt).

That ending, by the way, allows a bright young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) to get the last word.

Those gripped by paranoia around the feminisation of culture will be sent into convulsions by The King. But for the target audience (and those in the mood for a revisionist, nicely-acted romp) it will hit the spot.

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