Sunday, December 27, 2009

Unamerican movie

Sailer writes:
Am I going deaf?
Or was much of Robert Downey's English-accented dialogue in Sherlock Holmes close to inaudible? I started to understand more of what the star was saying after about an hour. I think I could follow the diction of Jude Law's Dr. Watson a little better. ...

In contrast, Englishman Hugh Laurie has been doing Holmes with an American accent to perfection on House on TV for most of the decade.
I don't even watch these movies in phony British accents. If the producers wanted to make a movie for the American market, then it should hire actors who can speak American.

Yes, I know that American English was derived from British English, and this movie character was derived from British fictional books. But that was long ago. This particular movie does not resemble any of those books, and nobody knows what a fictional character ought to sound like anyway. So why give him the silly accent?

If the avatars on the 3-D blue planets can speak American English, then surely Sherlock could also. (I am assuming that the avatars do; I haven't seen that movie yet. I don't think that they would spend $300M on a movie and then screw it up with British accents.)

3 comments:

Lily said...

I think you are missing out on a lot by not watching HOUSE. Hugh does a lot of humor in the show besides being AMAZING in it. Why don't you just give it a try???
It comes back Jan. 11th. Monday night.8 PM EST. :)

Roger said...

In House, the main character conceals his British accent, but one of his associates speaks with an Australian accent.

Anonymous said...

Isn't the australian accent fake too?