The worst acting by good actors I have ever seen

I think you're right Al323211......it's kind of like saying that Bruce Willis' American accent is just awful.....

I thought Farrell and McGregor both did a decent job in their roles and with their characters/accents.

There is no such thing as an "American accent", which is really just an umbrella term for the hundreds if not thousands of different accents in North America. Someone born and raised in Manhattan will not sound a thing like someone from The Bronx. Heck, it even depends which part of Manhattan you're from!

Similarly, there is no such thing as an "English accent" -- or "English English", though it generally refers to Received Pronunciation to most people around the world. There are many different accents in the United Kingdom, and, like American accents, they are generally only distinguishable by people familiar with the accents and locale.

Obviously, some of them are different to tell apart, but it is still difficult to know how "well" an accent is being performed unless you know well yourself.

No, they were terrible. McGregor is Scottish (British), Farrell is Irish (not British), yet neither could pull off a London accent to and Irishman (me), but apparently the rest of the world was fooled. Not quite Don Cheadle in Ocean's Eleven, but not much better. In fact, the only person who clearly wasn't "acting" was their father. Everyone else either overacted or had an accent conducive of a parody. It played out pretty much like an EastEnder's TV movie, only worse. Danny Dyer and one the mugs from Lock Stock would have done a better job than these two clowns, and that really is saying something. Thankfully, the movie's "plot" was as bad as the accents, "lol". It actually made Match Point look good (it wasn't)

I thought they got the accents spot on. To my ears (which are South East English like the rest of me) Farrell and McGregor both sounded like typical upwardly mobile working class Londoners - in contrast to Farrell's girlfriend in the movie (lower class and proud of it) and McGregor's actress girlfriend and her family (home counties middle class).

The dialogue also sounded authentically British, with the exception of some of McGregor's philosophical musings - "Then was then. And now is now. And it's always now."

Agreed. I thought "It's happening in England and they have english accents. Story checks out".

But i should mention that English's my third language, which means that i don't necessarily pick up on all the subtleties of spoken English and between the different English accents. I can distinguish easily between, say, a guy from New York and a guy from the south like Louisiana or Texas and maybe i think i would recognize a Californian accent ("Oh my God, it was amaaazing"). I obviously recognize the English English accent. But not much more than that. I wouldn't really know Birmingham from Manchester or from London or anywhere else.

Anyway, point being, a majority (?) of the audience doesn't notice this kind of things, i was among them. Managed to enjoy the film despite it.



People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs

Accents aside, to me it's Colins best part. He's totally believable when acting nervous. It surprised me that he could act this great.

Ed Powers = Woody Allen