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.
