The Lost King (2022, Stephen Frears) (Patreon)

46/100

A remarkable true story fictionalized in the dopiest possible way. It's one thing for the movie to keep underlining how much Philippa Langley's own disability (chronic fatigue syndrome) makes her identify with Richard III; it's another, considerably dumber thing to show her continually haunted by him, in the form of an actor she once saw play Shakespeare's Richard. (This is the kind of film in which someone can't just be generally intrigued by history, regularly doing research as a hobby—we have to be shown some specific lightbulb moment that sets things in motion.) And while Langley apparently did often act on her gut feelings, and did get overly excited by an 'R' (for Reserved) on the spot where Richard's skeleton was ultimately found, the degree to which we're urged to cheer intuition over scholarship gets pretty damn risible if that's not how you're already wired. Hawkins does her best, and it's always nice to see Mark Addy in a substantial role (his character's professional opportunism, and how that gradually takes a back seat to genuine enthusiasm, has more psychological heft than anything Langley does onscreen), but this is pure late-Frears middlebrow treacle. Also, for a film that gets very huffy about credit being stolen, as if that's more interesting than the discovery itself, Lost King sure does some heavy-duty pilfering of its own: The bland Leicester parking lot beneath which Langley and her team found Richard III's skeleton had been identified as a strong possibility by Audrey Strange, way back in 1975 (or possibly even as early as 1962; sources differ), but screenwriters Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope clearly felt it'd be more fun if our hero performed all of the historical sleuthing solo, mere months before hiring a bulldozer. Condensing a process that occupied some 7-8 years into less than one constitutes defensible artistic license (and I'll even overlook stuff like pretending that the person who created Scotland's chapter of the Richard III Society just sort of stumbled onto it), but you can't reassign the key grunt work and then turn around and complain that U Leicester stole Langley's thunder.