I’m always surprised when I hear a good one. Once I was thinking the actor’s accent was really good – turned out he was American. My sister does the “looking up on imdb” thing, too.
If we’re talking about TV in addition to movies, I cringed every time I heard one of the actors on the various NCIS series try to speak a foreign language. Gibbs’s Russian was by far the worst offender. Neither I nor my daughter (a native speaker) could understand a word he was saying.
Chris O’Donnell’s German came in a close second.
I give Margot Robbie credit. I had seen her in other movies before I saw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and I remember thinking “She does a good Australian accent” and only later finding out she was actually Australian. Her American accent in the other movies had been good enough I had assumed she was American.
I do recall reading that Tommies weren’t doing too well with that particular town either, mostly calling it 'Wipers."
Um, that is what mostly means.
Ask me how bad Mark Harmon and Pauley Perrette’s ASL is.
How…bad…was it?
Hold on… isn’t this the Wornout premises for jokes thread?
Dont blame him. They hired an accent coach. Turned out he was irish. So, VanDyke is in the clear.
Brits have told me that Hepburn’s Cockney in My Fair Lady was even worse.
And of course, in Men in Tights Ewles delivers the beat down to Costner… Prince John: And why should the people listen to you?
Robin Hood: Because, unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.
Did you ever see Dick do his impression of Stan Laurel? Mine is much better.
Trivia challenge: In what classic comedy did Audrey Hepburn briefly appear as “Chiquita”?
Yes! I even posted about it in the thread about “series you’ve watched lately”.
When House M.D. was on, Mrs. Geek told me she saw Hugh Laurie in a movie where he had this horrible fake British accent. I pointed out that Hugh Laurie was actually English and the horrible “fake” British accent was probably his real accent.
A lot of “bad” accents aren’t actually bad at all, they are just not what you are expecting to come out of a particular actor’s mouth.
That said, I agree with the OP. It doesn’t matter if the movies are just entertaining fiction. There are some really bad accents out there, and they can be a bit (or sometimes more than a bit) jarring. If you are trying to get immersed in a story on the screen, a horrible accent can ruin the entire effect and take you right out of the immersion.
Highlander was one of the worst for me. Christopher Lambert was supposed to be Scottish but too much of his native tongue (French) came through. Sean Connery on the other hand was supposed to be Egyptian but instead he sounded Scottish. When the Egyptian character sounds significantly more Scottish than the character who is supposed to be Scottish, I think you have a problem.
Netherlands-born actor Jeroen Krabbé played Dr. Charles Nichols, the bad guy in the film version of The Fugitive with Harrison Ford. I hear his Dutch accent toward the end, when he has more lines of dialogue. It’s just a small distraction, though. What nearly ruins the film for me is the pacing and cheesiness of the ending (from Kimble’s arrival at the conference onward).
The Russian commanders in Rambo II and III were English and Dutch, respectively. It was worth killing them just to put an end to their mangling of the language.
Worse than Pink Lady’s English.
(go to 2:33 on the video)
I remember people complaining about Russell Crowe’s Australian accent in Gladiator. Given that most of the Romans had English accents and he was supposed to be from the hinterlands of Spain, his accent was about the only thing in that movie that made any sense.
This is true. Since we’re talking about Hugh Laurie, I was always baffled by how everyone raved about his excellent American accent in House. To me, it has always sounded incredibly fake.
I suspect that this is because I was already very familiar with him due to Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster. I know what his normal voice sounds like, so when I hear that American accent coming out of him, my brain just screams “That’s not right!”
Could’ve also been that you’re profoundly aware that he’s faking the, uh, gravel — and so you already start to smirk as soon as you hear the guy doing a gravelly ’merkan accent, even if he never actually says “respiratory” like a Brit (and, hoo, boy, are you on guard to see if he ever once does say “respiratory” like a Brit).
I can’t tell a good accent from a bad accent. Nor can I tell if a vocalist is auto tuned. And Mary, merry, marry, all sound exactly same.