For my first complaining/pet peeve post I have chosen an annoyance that seems to be a bigger deal to me than most people I talk to about it.
okay.
This is it.
It really bothers me when American actors make no attempt at an accent when they are playing a character that is say, German or French.........or British.
My major point here is that it really takes me out of the story to watch an actor that is surrounded by other actors with accents make no attempt themselves. I can't help but say, are you playing an American?? Then what's with the mid-western apple pie-American as can be accent?
I say at least keep it consistent. If you choose as a filmmaker to hire an American actor to play an non American, (other than Canadian) than make sure everyone talks the same. That way I can imagine that they are really speaking German or whatever and I am seeing it through an imaginary filter that gives me the German in American English. Just don't mix British, American and French accents because it confuses me.
I have to supply examples here lest you think I am imagining this. I'll do 3 off the top of my head.
1.
The current case in point is Tom Cruise in Valkyrie. When I heard about Tom Cruise playing a Nazi I thought, hey thats cool he has a chance to show us all he can play more than Tom Cruise in varing degrees of intensity which is what we always get from him......no before someone jumps in with...yeah but he's not a character actor.........I would say to that.....then he shouldn't be playing a Nazi.
Here is the trailer so that you can see for yourself what I i mean.
2.
The film Marie Antoinette was marred seriously for me by Kirstin Dunst's no attempt to sound Austrian or French. This might be because Sofia Coppola, the director wanted to make a statement to draw a parallel to Marie Antoinette to current socialites like Paris Hilton......but still.
3.
The film that got me thinking about this issue to begin with........Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
When you are looking for a good lead for a film that takes place in medieval England...medieval as in 'America hasn't been discovered by Europeans yet' then it's best to hire Kevin Costner.....which to his credit did a good southern accent in JFK.
Anyway, I could think of more examples, but these are a few that bug me.
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3 comments:
I agree that it's bad to mix accents. But I do think that it's funny that much of the time, they choose British accents to be the default for "foreign language." Like in the Tom Cruise film, all the "Germans" are speaking with British accents. This helps us to believe they're speaking German I guess... I agree that it would be distracting to have a bunch of anglos faking German accents for an entire movie, but why do they have to default to British accents? Why doesn't everyone do an American accent?
The worst example I can remember is The Musketeer. You've got French actors, British actors, and then in the lead roles a couple of young American actors.
At first I thought they weren't even trying to sound like the rest of the cast (either French or British), but they kept talking kind of funny. I think they were trying to do some sort of British accent, except that they had no idea what they were doing and ended up sounding worse than they did with straight American accents.
If the worst thing about Robin Hood POT had been Kevin's accent, I think it might have been an okay movie. The thing about that particular role was that Kevin did try. He failed, and at some point, the director told him to give up and just be Kevin. Much like Carrie Fisher's brief attempt in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
My new hope is that we can just find British actors to do the British stuff, and American actors to do the American stuff.
At least it's not like the old days, when you had American actors trying to speak with British accents while playing American roles. I refer to "Gone With the Wind" and the like. Highly confusing.
Also, I always refer to that one actor as "That Crazy Tom Cruise." I think it's fitting.
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