LLFF goes to the Renoir cinema

I saw The King's Speech last night. When I first saw the trailer, I thought it looked brilliant. Then I thought about it more, and realised it looked really schmaltzy and superficial and crap, but I knew it would be a big talking-point, so I knew I would see it anyway. Then the reviews came out and I didn't read them because I wanted to make my own opinion, but all the Oscar hype made me dread it even more. And now I've witnessed it for myself and I can say this: it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. It was schmaltzy and over-simplistic, and I found Geoffrey Rush a bit annoying, and all the class stuff was AWFUL, and our continuing love for all this stiff-upper lip olde Englande is terribly depressing, and they hired an Australian to be Edward the whatever, and they hired a Brit to play Wallace Simpson (is it spelled as in Grommit or as in the sub-Dorothy Perkins clothes shop? Can't be bothered to Google), both of which annoyed me, and it was hardly a break-out role for Colin Firth, but his stammer was really convincing, and it was a nice story, and no one can blame the person who found it thinking 'Ker-ching!', and I laughed out loud two or three times and although I winced when there was a smattering of applause as the credits rolled, I still left the cinema feeling warm, and not just from the fact that it was heaving.

I had not been optimistic when I arrived at the Renoir in Russell Square's Brunswick Centre - there was no automatic ticket machine for pre-paid collections, so we had to queue for ages, and then it turned out that I'd absent-mindedly flicked my mouse's track wheel like a total spanner after selecting the Renoir, and had instead bought tickets at the Curzon Chelsea, so I had to rebuy tickets to see it at the Renoir. Livid when your email confirmation clearly states Chelsea and you realise that you have been an unarguable div. The nice lady looked at me like it happens all the time, and said that I might be able to get a refund, which was unexpected but would be a relief, as paying £22 to see Colin Firth struggle with a speech impediment is not my idea of fun. And - goodness, what a coincidence - the man from the King's Road Curzon has just this minute called and given me back my money. Which is amazing and completely undeserved. But anyway, so the cinema was heaving, and because it was in Bloomsbury, and it was an independent, and the film was about the Royal family, there was a noticeably different clientele (Em and I saw two different women in full-length fur coats), but still always with the freaking coughing in the winter months, and the well-dressed man in his sixties sitting next to me may have had immaculate manners and behaved perfectly in every other area, but he still stank of stale sweat, and the smell travelled in putrid wafts over to me every time he shifted in his seat.

Other than that it was a really fun night. AND I ordered a plate of delicious risotto afterwards and didn't eat all of it, even though I could have. Things really ARE changing.