銀幕上愛爾蘭最好和最糟糕的…第四部分。

And we’ve made it. The finale of the Best and Worst. And sadly, we’ve already finished our best, which only leaves us with the worst. This time I only have two points of discussion, but they are big ones. So, let’s just jump straight in, shall we?

在 Part One, we discussed the wonderful, and in Part Two we discussed the weak. Some of the best in Part Three.

1. Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)
   

   

   This is a film with actors. It is about people. And that is all you need to know because the “interesting” part about this is: what happened to the voices?!
   When the trailer was released, everybody in Ireland was shocked. Never has a film shown so many accent stereotypes! Don’t get me wrong, the actual film is awful; a cliché story about two people (farmers because, of course they are) who are caught in the middle of a land dispute falling in love and running to each other in the rain with a bad script and a bad…well, everything else. But…my god. The accents! The horror!

   What makes this confusing is that the film features an amazing cast with Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan and Christopher Walken, actors who have shown their talent in many projects many times before. So why on Earth do they sound like they learned how to do Irish accents from South Park? The film has been made fun of by everybody now so there really isn’t anything else I can say (the Leprechaun Museum tweeted “Even we think this is too much”) but every time I think about it, I still feel a chill run down my spine. The accents are horrific, the acting is boring, the dialogue is cringe. But I must admit, it is impressive how it unified an entire country against it. To give you a taste of how bad the film is, I have added a direct conversation below. Enjoy.

   Anthony: Where do we go when we die? The sky?
   Rosemary: The ground.
   Anthony: Then what’s the sky for?
   Rosemary: It’s for now. The sky is for now.
   *UGH*

2. Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996)
   

   

   And here it is, the final piece of this terrible puzzle. Let’s set the record straight; you should not take ‘Murder, She Wrote’ seriously. The show is a very light-hearted detective series starring a crime writer who always solves the mystery. Imagine ‘Castle’ but older and less charismatic.
   That being said, this is a “Best and Worst” list and I have to highlight the trilogy of episodes set in Ireland. These episodes take an already hard-to-believe situation and blast it into space. By the time one episode ends with a national holiday dedicated to the lead character because she solved the murder, you’ll already be on the floor laughing.
   The main issue is how Ireland is represented. Most scenes involve farmers arguing in pubs, everyone is shocked at how “modern” America is when the lead character arrives and most of the crime happens because of problems with owning land (just like ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’…I’m starting to think that Americans only have one view of Ireland)
   Not to mention that nothing was filmed in Ireland, with Irish people and instead filmed in LA with Californians. I mean it just doesn’t get any better does it.

And there it is, the end of our journey through only a tiny handful of Irish representation in media. I hope you know what to watch and what to avoid (or don’t avoid, get some friends together and have a laugh). Your next step is to find what style of film suits you and dive into what there is, because for a small country, we have a lot to offer.