| Bad Movie Accents |
| Written by Nez | |
| Friday, 20 June 2008 | |
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I apologise that this has nothing at all to do with the topic of this blog. But I'm a movie buff, a huge movie buff. While in Beechworth, hanging out with a few likely lads, I believe it was Donal, Brent, Eugene, and Vince at the time, somehow the conversation got to movies and bad accents. There's some terrible, terrible ones over the years, many perpetrated by Australians making futlie attempts at American accents. The Australian twang is really something that's hard to shake and part of the reason why I think Cate Blanchett is so talented. That woman is an accent machine. But I'll come back to Australians. Anyway, during our discussion in Beechworth, Donal quite rightly pointed out Tom Cruise's effort at an Irish accent in Far and Away. Being an Irishman himself, who better to pick out a bad apple. We covered a lot of accents and had general agreement over dodgy ones over the years. So, today a friend sent me an article at Entertainment Weekly that covered the 16 worst accents in movie history . I wasn't surprised by most of the entries, Dick Van Dyke's abysmal Cockney accent was of course in there, as was Kevin Costner's turn as Robin Hood. To make Donal happy, Tom also made the cut with his attempt at an Irish accent. But here's the thing, I made 3 calls at beecworth that were all agreed upon unanimously, and they all starred Sean Connery. Now don't get me wrong, I love Sean Connery. One of my all time favourite movies is The Man Who Would Be King. But let's be honest, his thick Scottish brogue is not something he can shake. I hereby submit these 3 examples of worst accents in movie history. Highlander - A spaniard that souds Scottish, The Untouchables - an Irish beat cop that sounds Scottish, and The Hunt For The Red October - a Russian submarine captain that sounds Scottish. You know I'm right, just picture in your head Sean Connery delivering his lines from any of those movies and you know I'm right. How any of those could be overlooked in a list featuring bad accents is beyond me. The defense rests. Trackback(0)
Comments (3)
  written by Peter Horsman, July 04, 2008
Sean Connery using an accent?!? That's preposterous! How dare anyone cast doubt on Sir Sean's acting cred by saying he should actually refine his characters to having something resembling the genuine accent for said character to increase believability. Sean would never stoop to such "tricks". The truth be told said character (were they actually real) would no doubt be glad to be portrayed with a "Scortish" accent - we all should be so lucky!
Oh, and by the way, in Highlander he was actually Egyptian, despite the quite Spanish sounding name. He was actually born Tak Ne and like McLeod would have to change his name along the way to avoid suspicion (And a tip: Knowing far too much about Highlander is not as sexy as you might imagine). When Connor accusing him of being a "Spanish Peacock" he retorts (quite rightly in his Scottish brogue) "I'm not Spanish, I'm Egyptian". As for Red October - well, they start by speaking Russian and then it all gets too hard and the film makers get scared that people will lose interest so all of a sudden they switch to English (although it's only for our ears that we hear English and they are supposed to be still speaking in Russian...sheesh!). I put to you, dear Nez, that to qualify for worst accent one must actually attempt to put on an accent. Sean Connery (Mr Connery to you), was well above all that "method" nonsense long before he retired. report abuse
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 written by Donna, July 17, 2008
Wow, loved that movie but I missed the fact that he was meant to be a Spaniard... maybe it was the unmistakable Scottish accent that fooled me. Hehe, yep I agree with you totally. Love Sean Connery, but they shouldn't make him do accents.
Interesting about Cate Blanchard, I think she's great and I never knew she was Australian... I knew she was good at accents because she has played a lot of different nationalities in her films, I never once detected a twinge of Australian. report abuse
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Perhaps it's the reveration he has as a celebrity that lets him get away with it...