ROYAL MEMORIES: PRINCE CHARLES’ TRIBUTE TO THE QUEEN
Friendly Rating: All ages
Safety Rating: Utterly safe
Quality Rating: A fascinating glimpse into the Royal Private Life with some conspicuous abscenses.
Special airs on PBS tonight, check your local listings for times.
If it were any other family’s home movies, we’d be rolling our eyes and bored silly. But this isn’t just any family – it’s Queen Elizabeth II, of Great Britain and her son Prince Charles and select family members, with footage shot by Her Majesty, herself. Narrated by His Highness as his personal tribute to his mama in honor of the Diamond Jubilee (60 years) of her reign, the film makes them seem like any other family.
Okay, any other family with fabulous wealth and scenes from Mum’s coronation in 1952. There’s a great bit, though, from the family photo session after the coronation, where everybody is all grouped around Her Majesty. Prince Charles, who was only 4 years old at the time, starts hiding behind hid hands until Mum taps him on the shoulder.
Even then, watching His Royal Highness Prince Charles chuckling as he watches film of himself as a child with his mother (man, he looked like Prince William then) does get to be a bit much. But you kind of have to go with it, since the one thing you do get is a feel for who these people are in a rather reserved way.
Is this all calculated to make everyone look good? Duh. But the emphasis seems to be mostly on the Prince of Wales and the Queen, especially her early years as monarch and just before. And can you blame His Highness? He does have a rather special relationship with his mother and you really get a sense of it in the film.
