Word: broadbent
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...teenage Victoria was heir to the throne held by her uncle, King William (Jim Broadbent), but living in royal lockdown at Kensington Palace. "Even a palace can be a prison," she tells us. We're well acquainted with the downside of royalty, thanks to the current Windsors' chatty ex-in-laws, but Victoria isn't just whinging. She sleeps in a room with her German-born mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), has only her spaniel Dash for a playmate and isn't allowed to walk down stairs alone. Her governess, the Baroness Lehzen (Jeanette Hain), is the closest...
...Young Victoria features the jolly King William at his birthday banquet, quite in his cups, trashing Victoria's mother. It's a funny bit, ending with Richardson huffing off and some dry old man saying, ruefully, "Families." This scene has the mark of something written expressly for Broadbent by Fellowes, but in Lytton Strachey's biography Queen Victoria, and again in Christopher Hibbert's, you'll find that scene, told exactly as it is onscreen. The only difference is that Blunt's Victoria doesn't burst into tears as the real princess apparently did; the movie heroine has more backbone...
...With most parents (except for Draco's mother and the Weasleys) absent from the action, the Hogwarts teachers are the guardians of youth. They're not all suited to the job; some are foolish, some sinister. The new teacher, Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), runs a salon for his pet students. An incorrigible name-dropper, he "collects" children whose talent or connections might bring him glory. The resentful Snape (Alan Rickman, effortlessly oily), whose motives have been murky but whom Dumbledore continues to trust, becomes Draco's surrogate dad: snake for snake...
...They are a uniformly frustrating lot, brightened only by regular quips from Mirren or the always marvelous Jim Broadbent, who plays the fictional Inkheart's author, Fenoglio. He and Mirren mine their parts for any comic angle, wisely staying out of the dramatic fray. Bettany looks as though he's itching to do the same, but he gets stuck with a lot of self-important strutting and moping and as result, he fares the worst. The movie veers between silly and scary, but ultimately, its tone and level of violence seem inappropriate for either a typical PG audience or Funke...
...Pullman is tall and handsome and pink-faced in that way that older Englishmen often are. His conversation easily ranges from theoretical physics to the work of John Milton. He's like one of those wise, stern-but-humorous uncles usually played in movies by Michael Caine or Jim Broadbent. He doesn't look particularly satanic. But then again, neither, probably, does Satan...