The Royal Collection Boxed Set Includes Some Of The Best Royalty Movies

Movie and royalty fans no doubt did NOT miss hearing about The King's Speech this year. In this historical drama King George VI (Colin Firth) tries to beat his stammer with the help of an Australian speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush.)

The King's Speech was an extremely successful movie, with both the public and at the Academy Awards where it received a whopping 16 award nominations and won four -- the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay.

In this 2006 film, The Queen (played by Helen Mirren) in question is Queen Elizabeth II and the story is a fictional telling of the events that happened after Diana, Princes of Wales died on August 31, 1997.

The Queen did better at the box office than was anticipated and was a strong success with the critics, too. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards and Helen Mirren won for Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.

The Young Victoria is a lesser known but intriguing movie about the life of Queen Victoria and, in particular, her coming to the throne, the early years of her reign and her marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. If you are not familiar with this movie, it may because it had a somewhat limited release like the one that the new Jane Eyre movie is receiving.

The Young Victoria received three Academy Award moninations and won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Shakespeare in Love is a romantic comedy that tells a fictional story of William Shakespeare and his love affair that occurred while he was writing Romeo and Juliet. Although fiction, some of the characters are based on people that did exist in that period of Shakespeare's life plus many of the characters, lines, and plot devices are pointedly linked to Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare in Love was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven of them including the Academy AWard for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Original Musical or Comedy Score and Best Original Screenplay. This is one that I have not seen but it definitely sounds like it should not be missed.

The final movie in this set is Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair is called a 'costume drama' and is based on the book by William Makepeace Thackeray, which has been made into many films. The story is that of a young orphan girl who rises through the levels of society by using a combination of her quick wits and her female wiles.

Vanity Fair received a mixed reception and no Academy Awards. Potentially, this is the weakest movie in the set although I have not seen it yet so I cannot comment beyond the impression that I have been given by the reviews I have read.

Those Reviews were a mixed bunch and you can read a small assortment of the expert ones on Wikipedia. Surprisingly or maybe not surprisingly, Roger Ebert says that the unusual quality of Vanity Fair sets it aside from the Austen movies (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice) because it is not about nice people, which makes the characters in Vanity Fair much MORE interesting. His review makes me think it is worth checking out this movie, particularly when it is included as part of The Royal Collection movie set.