I watched Men in Tights last night, which has it’s moments, but the accents - grauuugh! worse than Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
So, what movie is the worst culprit for accent bastardy?
(I’ll be very interested to hear the American perspective of, say, Lee Evans’ faux American accent in MouseHunt and Kenneth Branagh in Dead Again)
Dick Van Dyke takes some beating…
But try Julia Roberts’s Irish ‘brogue’ in Michael Collins.
Got to be Tommy Lee Jones in "Blown Away" doing an Irish accent. Badly.
Ewan McGregors “Sgt. Grimes” in Black Hawk Down.
What the hell where they thinking when they cast him as an American solider? Worst accent ever.
A page here lists a lot of films I’ve never seen.
Dick Van Dyke is sure up there, according to them. What about the others listed?
99.999% of all Southern accents are bad. Not everyone in Georgia sound like they just walked off the set of Gone With the Wind.
The entire “Japanese” cast in You Only Live Twice. I believe they were from Hong Kong.
“You know your sacky, Mr. Bond”
Yup, Mike Myers (IMHO) deserves his place up against the bullet-pocked wall.
Let’s expand the scope of this thread to include faux accents that you thought were good: I’ll kick off with Mel Gibson in Hamlet, which I thought he pulled off remarkably well (although of course it was the accent of a Shakespearian actor, not that of a Dane).
Natalie Portman as Princess Amidala in make-up mode. Though I could be slamming her unfairly - that was meant to be an Emglish accent, wasn’t it?
A good one was Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors. Renee Zellweger was OK in Bridget Jones’ Diary too, though she made some of the obvious mistakes (not every a sound is pronouced ‘ah’, you know, and we do say the r when it comes between vowels).
Russell Crowe’s West Virginia accent in A Beautiful Mind.
:o
Well, the thing with Star Wars is that none of the accents have to be anything in particular because they are all meant to be from a galaxy far far away (the only exception to this (I think) is Ewan McGregor, who has to try to sound like he will grow up into Alec Guinness)
It’s much harder to pick out good accents, as if they were good they don’t stand out in memory so much.
Daniel Day-Lewis in “The name of the Father” was excellent.
Robert Carlisle in “51st State” had a passable scouse accent, to me. Although if you are from Liverpool / Chester perhaps you would have a different opinion on that one.
I think Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi sounds more like Eddie Izzard than Alec Guinness. I would love it, LOVE it if Eddie Izzard played Obi-Wan Kenobi in episode III.
Which reminds me of a Phil Jupitus standup routine where he mocks George Lucas for the (in Jupitus’s view) absurdity of casting an Irishman (Liam Neeson) and a Scotsman (Ewan McGregor) in a space epic, set, as you say, long long ago and far far away. The arrogance of this (English and American accents are more believable? Why?) plus Jupitus’s lame attempt at an Irish accent (I believe he actually said “Begorrah” as part of the sketch) really turned me off.
Sorry. Bit of a hijack. My nomination for worst accent? Scottie from Star Trek, of course.
“Obi, is that lipstick you’re wearing?”
Or the English accents in This is Spinal Tap. My British friends were all amazed the actors were American. Absolutely bloody brilliant accents (and movie.)
Well, I’d nominate Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula but it seemed like he made the decision early on to simply phase out the accent. It was a really bizarre movie to hear him fading in and out of an accent.
[good accent hijack]
Connie Booth’s English accent in Fawlty Towers was superb.
Another vote for Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors.
Meryl Streep is pretty much perfect in every accent she’s ever done.
Kevin Kline’s French accent in that rubbish movie with Meg Ryan.
What do Merkins think of Nicole Kidman’s and Rachel Griffiths’s Merkin accents?
[/good accent hijack]
I thought Kenneth Branagh’s accent was very good. It’s been a while since I saw the movie, but I don’t remember catching any slips.
Guy Pearce’s American accent in Mementowas pretty good, too…he only slipped a couple of times (I remember him saying “alone” with his own accent in one scene).
Oh, Gawd! Canadian Dan Ackroyd in “Driving Miss Daisy” trying to fake a Southern accent is the most painful thing I’ve ever heard. He pronounces “here” as “hee-yaah!” which is the sound a donkey makes when it brays. 
In Mississippi, we pronounce “here” as “hnh!”, more of a noise than a word, really.
“Girl, you betta get yo ass ovah hnh!” is what my uncle says to me whenever I’m trying to get into trouble. 
.:Nichol:.