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A Royal Pleasure

Jeffery Mingo | Homewood, IL USA | 11/20/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This documentary asks compelling questions: monarchies have shrunk to 29, do countries still need them? Will they continue beyond the next few decades? Prince William is mentioned here briefly. They just used his image on the cover because of his pulchritude.

"Family Feud" would ask for the top responses in a survey. However, this documentary did not focus on Sweden, Japan, Monaco, and the other famous monarchies of which many Americans would know. It speaks heavily of Queen Elizabeth, but then it moves to Uganda, Tonga, and Nepal. It is multiracial and it crosses continents. National Geographic looked at a cross-section of the world without being cheesy like that series Leonard Nimoy narrates. I did notice that the smaller the nation, the more likely monarchs themselves were willing to sit for interviews. The King of Greece sat for an interview yet they did not include a segment on his nation.

The narrator's voice sounded soooooo familiar. Then I found out it was Keith David from "Dead Presidents" and "Pitch Black" (not to be confused with David Keith, the actor with the chin dimple). I hope this work really opens doors for him and allows him to compete with fellow African-American thespian Morgan Freeman.

Perhaps the moral of this documentary is "Live and let live." If countries want to have royalty, then let them. However, it's repeated by the narrator and other Americans that they are happy not to have a family in that role. So much for Morrissey's saying "The Queen is dead.""