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Source: LionsgateFilmsUK / YouTube
Over the years, there have been some truly grotesque attempts at Irish accents in Hollywood movies.
But a trailer for a new movie that hit social media last night has made an admirable attempt to break records for how many bad Irish accents you can fit in two minutes and thirty seconds.
Wild Mountain Thyme, filmed in Co Mayo in fall 2019, is the last film by John Patrick Shanley, winner of the 1988 Oscar for his film Moonstruck.
And it has a star-studded cast of Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Jon Hamm, and Christopher Walken.
As for the plot? Stop me if you heard this before.
The blurb reads: “An epic love story with dizzying lyricism, Wild Mountain Thyme is set in the stunning landscapes of rural Ireland, where everyone is half mad with loneliness or love and the weather is terrible.
Anthony and Rosemary are hapless lovers, whose families are embroiled in a dispute over a hotly contested land that separates their two farms.
Anthony (Dornan) always seems to be in the field working, exhausted by his father’s constant contempt. But what really hurts is his father’s threat to bequeath the family farm to his American cousin Adam. Rosemary (Blunt) at first seems to hold a grudge for being embarrassed by Anthony in childhood, but the sparks between them would keep a bonfire burning overnight. Her mother Aoife struggles to bring families together before it’s too late.
“Just when we think Anthony will muster the courage to face his pent-up feelings, Cousin Adam (Hamm) steps in with a plan to blow Rosemary up and make her fall in love for a magical 24 hours in Manhattan. But true love never expires! “
There are many stereotypes about the Irish, but “the sparks between them would keep a bonfire burning overnight” is a new one.
Anyway.
It all sounds very dramatic, but for Irish ears, it’s hard to hear beyond the accents of the trailer.
As a caller to RTÉ’s Liveline said today: “For an Irishman, Jamie Dornan has one of the worst Irish accents I have ever heard.”
There are so many aspects to distinguish in the trailer, many of them set in Will Ye Go, Lassie Go, but one of my personal favorites right now is hearing Christopher Walken say “you look like John Kelly and that man was as mad as the full moon ”. A commonly used phrase in “half-crazy rural Ireland,” of course.
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The Irish US Embassy was prepared to give the accents a pass anyway.
Source: Irish Embassy, USA/Twitter
The story is adapted from Shanley’s Outside Mullingar, which ran on Broadway in 2014 and received a Tony Award nomination for best play.
This type of performance is aimed directly at an American audience, it will open in theaters there and on demand on December 11.
There’s no Irish release date yet, but after months and months of cinemas closing this year, would you have to give it a try when they reopen?
It could even be a lot of fun, even if the premise is a bit hackneyed at this stage:
An irish movie #MountainWild pic.twitter.com/hOLUjlyWxo
– Foil Arms and Hog (@FoilArmsAndHog) November 11, 2020
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