Movie accents are often shocking. You think of the real heavy-hitters: Dick van Dyke, doing a cockney chimney sweep in Mary Poppins like someone who heard that London existed yesterday morning; Russell Crowe playing an Ancient Roman Gladiator as if he was from Australia rather than Ostia; Russell Crowe playing Robin Hood like he was from Sydney rather than Sherwood Forest, Russell Crowe's signing in Les Miserables making everyone, well, miserable. OK, I'll stop picking on big Russell.
In a world where Sean Connery can play the King of England as Scottish, and Sean Bean can play literally anyone on Earth or even made up places like Westeros as being from Sheffield - roll over, because there is a new king in town. Wild Mountain Thyme, a romcom about cutesy Irish people in cutesy old Ireland, dropped a trailer yesterday.
I say dropped a trailer: what I meant was "dropped a huge hairy bollock" because it was immediately ripped to shreds for the horrendous quality of the accents.
Advert
Firstly, there's Christopher Walken, who sounds like, well, Christopher Walken, in every movie he's ever been in. If you'd wondered what that unique voice would sound like trying to be Irish, then you're in luck.
Emily Blunt, who has been fairly convincing as an American in plenty of films, appears to have based her Irish accent on Ballykissangel repeats - and, annoyingly for us Irish, took the role ahead of Holliday Grainger, who played the wonderfully hackneyed Oirish named character Rosemary Muldoon in the stage version of Wild Mountain Thyme and, as evidenced by her role in the excellent Animals, can actually do an Irish accent well.
Now, the worst of the lot: Jamie Dornan. Jamie Dornan has no excuse. He's actually bloody Irish. He's from Belfast. He must have been there the whole time, on set, watching this leprechaun-hatted, knobbly-sticked, top-of-the-morning nonsense and didn't say a word.
Naturally, this whole debacle hasn't gone down well, but we'll leave the final word to the National Leprechaun Museum of Ireland. I'll let you cringe for a moment there while you think of the idea that there is a leprechaun museum, and wonder if they really needed to add the "of Ireland" bit at the end, as if Mozambique also had a leprechaun museum.
They simply tweeted "Even we think this is a bit much". Well said, rainbow lurkers. Well said.
Topics: Ireland
