If there is one thing that irritates me more than any other, it has to be historical inaccuracies in film and TV scripts.
Now I’m not talking about things like Braveheart or
The Battle of the Bulge or countless other attempts by the Americans to rewrite
history.
No, the things that irritate me are the little things,
the small easy to verify things, the things that they just can’t be bothered to
do right.
For example, take the 2006 movie “the Holiday” with
Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black, and Eli Wallach, which. I
particularly liked.
It has all the ingredients required for a great
Christmas film, engaging characters, humour, pathos, romance, cute kids,
and a happy ending, or in this case a multiple happy ending.
That aside the Grinch in me won’t forgive the
unpardonable sin of a glaring error and a failure to research correctly.
Eli Wallach’s character, Arthur, asks Iris played by
Kate Winslet
“What part of England are you from?”
To which she replies “Surrey”
“Cary Grant was from Surrey” Arthur says.
“That’s right he was” Iris confirms.
No, he bloody wasn’t from Surrey he was from Bristol.
How did they not get that right, why did they not
check a simple fact like that?
If they wanted to keep the Cary Grant reference, Iris
could have answered Arthur’s question.
“What part of England are you from?”
By saying, “Bristol”
Or if they wanted her to be from Surrey, why didn’t
they pick another internationally known actor from Surrey such as Bill Nighy, Colin
Firth, Edward Woodward, Julia Ormond, Julie
Andrews, Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, Peter Cushing, or Ronald
Colman.
How simple would that have been “Laurence Olivier was
from Surrey” Arthur could have said, but no they had to ruin an otherwise
perfectly good film.
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