My ears! my ears! (bad accents in movies)

Cafe Society
61

Well, I too am a native of Conyers, Georgia, and I just want to say right here that Holly Hunter’s accent makes my teeth hurt. I’ll admit that I watched too much TV and have lived in California for too long so that my accent’s been completely leeched away, but I know that I never talked like that, and never met anybody else from GA who talked like that.

But for Raising Arizona, all the accents were dead-on perfect. Especially hers. I don’t think they were going for realism at all with that movie; I think they were just going for super-emphasized “white trash.” (“Gotta git that dip-tet, Hi!”)

I agree 100% with whoever said that fake southern accents in movies are almost always awful. It offends me the most when the actors are really from the south. Watching “Designing Women” is doubly torturous, because not only is the writing so bad, but the actresses all sound like a community theater production of “Crimes of the Heart.” The only one who sounded “right” to me was Jean Smart, who was the only non-southerner in the cast.

Also spectacularly bad at being southern: Kenneth Brannagh in Wild, Wild West. Anyone in Steel Magnolias (see above, and I’m looking at you, Julia Roberts). And like others have mentioned, anybody who uses “y’all” to refer to one person.

On the other hand, I was impressed with Jodie Foster’s southern accent in Silence of the Lambs. It was too overdone to be accurate, but it worked for the part and it was believable. For accuracy, I was most impressed with Natasha Richardson’s southern accent in Nell. That is what every non-rural Georgia native I’ve ever met sounds like.

62

Worst ever in a movie: Leonardo DiCaprio’s SoCal mall rat whine in TITANIC. I adore the musical and have a shelf-ful of books about the disaster, but I was able to sit thru that movie exactly once. The accents and behavoir and oh god in heaven, the dialogue…

On TV, David Boreanaz plays a vampire now called Angel who was originally an 18th-century Irish bounder named Liam…something. They’ve never told us. Anyway, Liam’s “Irish” voice it so horrible some fans simply refer to it as That Accent. And if you’re really unlucky it will be accompanied, in certain episodes, with That Hair.

OTOH, people ask Alexis Denisof if he’s British all the time; he’s American but to be fair he did study at RADA for a while.

The Monty Python guys, brilliant though they were, only seemed to be able to do American accents by SHOUTING. Sheesh. Listening to Brits try to do Western accents when they’re playing cowboys is also lots of fun–they’re all over the place. And 1/3 of cowboys were black and many of the rest were from Mexico, or Brooklyn, or…

63

Holy bat crap, Zoff, you’re telling me he of talentless fame did this twice?!

First thing I thought of when I saw this thread was Keanu’s on-again, off-again pseudo-southern accent in The Devil’s Advocate. It got so bad that it became a running gag for my friend and I as we were watching–“There it is! It’s back! Whoop, no accent here. Ah, now it’s back!”

Truly, how the hell one of eh-looks and mind-numbingly vapid acting skill continues to find work is beyond me.

Nicole’s accents are impeccable. I truly think that woman is a phenomenon.

Rachel has a pretty good accent, although it’s a bit exaggerated. Being a So Cal gal, I do hear that sort of swallowed sound, but Rachel plays it up a bit more than I’m used to hearing, at least as Brenda on Six Feet Under. But who knows, could be part of her character.

64

no no no the worst is in far and away tom cruise trying to be irish it just doesn’t work

65

Julia Roberts as an Irish chamber maid in “Mary Reilly” was pretty bad. I generally don’t like her but thought her courageous for taking that part, being without makeup and looking like a junkie for the larger part of the movie. The accent was bad, though.

66

Aw, Ruffian beat me to it. Keanu in The Devil’s Advocate is absolutely horrendous. (His accent, I mean. Oh, well maybe not just his accent.)

And Graham Chapman’s Texan is so frighteningly bad it actually adds to the humour of the sketches.

I loved Merryl Streep’s Italian accent in Bridges of Madison County. She sounded exactly like my sister-in-law from Brindisi does when she speaks English. Streep’s character was supposed to be from Bari, which is about 20 miles up the coast from Brindisi. Very cool.

And the only people who can do Boston accents are from this area. Adam Sandler (I think he’s from New Hampshire), Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Dennis Leary. No Hollywood, Bostonians DON’T all sound like the Kennedys.

67

You didn’t? You must not have gotten out of the shadow of Atlanta very often. There are planty of folks in rural Georgia who share Holly’s full-on Raising Arizona* accent. (And they use it without Holly’s irony.) Perhaps you have lived in California for too long! :wink:

I will agree with you that Kenneth Brannagh’s “Southern accent” was an abomination. And that Jodie Foster’s was excellent.

68

What do you think of the Peoria-born David Ogden Stiers as Charles Emerson Winchester, III?

69

I don’t know about his Boston accent, but David Ogden Stiers did a passable Southern accent in Doc Hollywood. Not without flaws, but very good.

70

spoke just reminded me of Fred Gwynne as the Alabama judge in My Cousin Vinny. Seems funny when one realizes that of along with the actors who portray people from the NYC area, Mr. Gwynne was from there too.

71

I think Jude Law did great accent work in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I didn’t even realize it was him till the film was over.

72

Russell Crowe wasn’t duplicating a West Virginia accent, he was replicating the way John Nash talks.

In preparing for the role of John Nash, he talked with and studied Dr. Nash.

Not everyone from West Virginia, has the “I’m a hick, just off the mountain accent”, Dr. Nash being a genius, attending schools and college, graduate school in the North, (Pittsburgh - Carnegie University, and Princeton), if he had an accent it would diminish.

I have heard Dr. Nash speak in person in Philadelphia, Pa, and
Russell Crowe had his speaking, his voice, the way he talks and mannerisms exactly correct.

73

I think Kevin Spacey had Jim Williams accent / speaking voice correct on Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Having been to Savannah, GA, a listening to the natives, Kevin Spacey was perfect.

74

I think Kevin Spacey had Jim Williams accent / speaking voice correct on Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Having been to Savannah, GA, a listening to the natives, Kevin Spacey was perfect.

75

I don’t know what accent it is, but I thought Johnny Depp did an excellent Hunter S. Tompson for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I had no idea Keanu was even trying to do an accent in The Devil’s Advocate, and I’ve seen it several times. Guess I’ll have to watch it again. Love that ending. Every Keanu movie should end with him blowing his brains out.

76

:grumble: I wish people would stop picking on Dick Van Dyke for Mary Poppins. They cast him because they needed a guy who could dance. If judgement had been based solely on the accent, he never would have made it, but look at all the other stuff they changed or embellished. Give him a break already!

77

zeldarae

law, cher, you done beat me to it, dahlin.
For a Good example of the very difficult New Orleans accent, check out Albino Alligator, directed by Kevin Spacy, who could probably do a damn fine coonass his own self. I was especially impressed by William Fichtner. Not bad for a New Yorker!

78

I like the movie, in general, but Melanie Griffith’s accent in “Working Girl” is just like nails on a chalk board to me. She just doesn’t have a voice for accents – another example (awful movie but contains Liam Neeson so I’ve endured it) is “Shining Through”.

As for “Designing Women,” that was/is Dixie Carter’s normal speaking voice based on everything I’ve seen her in…though she comes off a little hautier sounding than her normal speaking voice.

The first time David Boreanaz used the Irish accent in a flashback it was AWFUL, painful even. As the shows (“Buffy” and “Angel”) have progressed, and they’ve done additional flashbacks, I think a coach must’ve told David not to hit the accent so hard because he seems to improved though it’s still not perfect. Conversely, I think James Marsters a reasonably good job.

It is interesting to note that in the flashback to his pre-vampire days, his accent was more subtle, implying that along with his manner of dress, the character embellishes his own English accent. Of course, he is American with little or no natural accent. I also think that Juliet Landau as Druscilla does a good job, but that’s just MHO based on how believable they are as characters–perhaps not how authentic the accents.

As a longtime Dick Van Dyke fan, I’d have to say that “Mary Poppins” was fantasy, and therefore, not bound too much by the laws of authenticity.

On southern accents, I’d be interested to read others opinions on Matthew McConaugh’s accents – being that he IS from Texas. In particular in the movie “EdTV” in which he does an interview for the TV producers and talks about his accents, slipping deeply into it, etc.

Finally, on “Star Wars: Ep I” I wanted to note Lucas’ comment about accents, specifically in reference to actress Pernilla August who played Shmi Skywalk. According to interviews I’ve read (I’ll find them if necessary but feel lazy at the moment), August expressed to Lucas concern about her own accent when Lucas cast her as Shmi. His reply was that he would just “make her from a planet where that had her accent.” Considering all the grief he’s endured over accents in his SW films, he usually isn’t and hasn’t tried to make any of his characters or creatures have any specific (Earth) accent, dialect or use recognizable (Earth) colloquialisms.

79

Having grown up in the Boston area, I’m with Mullinator and others here on Kevin Costner’s really bad Boston accent in 13 Days. Come to think of it though, I’ve not heard ANY accent that Costner’s done that sounds natural - he really needs to either give it up or get a better dialect coach.

But Damon and Affleck in Good Will Hunting? Absolutely authentic, given that they were playing at home. Robin Williams, however, had a bit of a hard time with it in the same movie. When Damon is talking with Williams about his favorite authors and Williams notes that they’re all dead, Damon’s reply about needing “… smelling salts and wicked heeta …” took me right back home.

80

All this talk about accents and no one has mentioned Meryl Streep yet, the woman who won Oscars for affecting accents so well.

One of the oddest sounds a human being has ever made was the “Texas” accent affected by Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element. Maybe He and Luc Bresson were trying to tell us that Texans will talk REALLY funny a couple hundred years from now? I think he was trying to imitate Warren Oates, but who knows?

Has Robert De Niro ever played a role without his native accent? Oh, yeah, as Fearless Leader in that Rockie and Bullwinkle movie. His re-creation of Paul Frees’ original was actually pretty good, and one of the few good things in that movie.