I loved this film but the one thing that nearly ruined it for me was Kim Catrall's phony accent. What kind of English accent is it supposed to have? I found it unlike any other Brit accent I've ever heard. Totally affected in my opinion. Please any accent specialists out there who have some light to shed on this issue.
shareNo one is worse than Costner's accents. I agree that Catrall's accent was a bit odd, but I gave this a pass though. It seemed logical that she was american but spent a great deal of her life with the Brit's. Perhaps she developed a hybrid of the two. Happens.
shareIn the first few scenes her accent sounded British to me, but after that, no.
shareRight at the start of this, everybody's accent was getting to me. Kim Cattrel's accent was dreadful - born in Liverpool or not. I was sure I kept hearing the Irish coming out of Pearce Brosnan, but Ewan McGregor's English accent was as bad as Cattrell's. It made my toes curl. Maybe his American accent's good, but his southern English was woeful. I wish they'd used his natural soft Scottish. The accents were the worst thing about this flick. It even had me stretching my ear at Tom Wilkinson's but I believe his American is very good. But then I'm not American so I can't hear whether it is or not.
shareagreed, McGregor's accent was a little strange, but Cattrel's was awful.
Not quite as bad as Russel Crowe in Robin Hood though, certainly the strangest English accent I've ever heard.
Mel Gibson in Bravehea...............
Bit of sick just came up...!
im english and Ewans was pretty good, but Sam's was OTT
shareI agree about Ewan McGregor's accent. I noticed it MORE than Cattrel's accent. It was worse.
share"but Ewan McGregor's English accent was as bad as Cattrell's. It made my toes curl. Maybe his American accent's good, but his southern English was woeful."
Southern? I was trying to work out if it was meant to be Yorkshire or Lancashire!
I thought Kim Cattrel's accent was spot on. I've met women who speak exactly like that (without the slight 'wavering' though).
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I think that's it grotee. I think she is supposed to be a Brit who has emigrated to America and gone native. I think that is something Brits will identify with (look where Blair makes most of his money nowadays!) and of course Catrall was born in the UK and moved to the US. I expect it was another sly piece of casting.
shareSame here, currently watching it, and I just had to see if anyone else had something to say about her horrible accent
shareI thought it was terrible, too. I was surprised to learn that she is actually british.
shareI'm not from the UK so I don't have the finest ear for the accents of the area, but I didn't think Catrall's accent was that appalling. I would venture to say most people were simply thrown because they had never heard her use that accent before. When I watched the movie, I didn't really know who she was, I've never seen much Sex and the City, but she looked kind of familiar. I didn't even know that it was the actress in Sex and the City until after I had fully viewed the movie. There was nothing distracting to me about the performance or the accent save the niggling feeling I had that I recognized the actress but couldn't place her. After I looked her up, I knew where I'd seen her before, and it said she was born in England. I don't know. I think a mountain is being made of a mole hill; the movie was great!
shareI thought the same thing. I wouldn't say it ruined the movie for me (although I didn't find the movie to be nearly masterpiece the feedback here on IMDB makes it out to be), but it was just a distractingly bad accent.
Her "accent" seemed to fluctuate throughout. It was there, then it wasn't. One of those roles that would have been more believable without an accent at all. I was hoping Amelia's story developed more as well.
shareonce Samantha in Sex and The City... always Samantha in Sex and The City.
shareI thought she did okay. I wouldn't say she was miscast at all. She was perfectly convincing for that role.
Now, the accent. Well, who's to say she was even British? Maybe Bly was American or Dutch and got married in Britain and then started to work for Lang. Or something. The accent wasn't spectacular, but it sounded neutral enough for a snobbish wannabe, so the phoniness was kind of in place.
As for the scene where she's smoking, I actually thought it was the least annoying. The lines, "You do realise how serious this is getting, don't you?" and "That won't be necessary," were really good, very direct and self-assertive. It was like seeing a hidden side of Bly's stuck-up facade.
I never saw Samantha instead of Amelia at all. Typecasting is a bitch, but that's our fault, not the actors'. And I should add that she was terrific in Meet Monica Velour.
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Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
It seemed like Cattrall wasn't even bothering to do an English accent, it was more like the Transatlantic accent of someone who had been born in America but had lived in the UK for a while (just pronouncing the odd word with an English accent.
Also, Pierce Brosnan's Irish lilt came out far too often (almost like he wasn't trying either), and I think someone with an Irish accent would find it very difficult to become Prime Minister (unless maybe it was Northern Irish)