So I'm flying home from Israel yesterday. Firstly, can I just say – don't fly with BMI since:
- They'll lose your luggage, claim to be 'tracing' it for three days and seemingly start the whole process again when you ring their Indian call centre when you get home.
- If you're flying back from Tel Aviv (flight time 5h35m), you will only get to see 1.75 movies, because they wait for 45 minutes in between movie cycles
- Who still uses VHS tapes? Oh yes, BMI
There was a reasonable range of movies and TV on offer (clearly Virgin have upped the game here), so on the way back I started watching A Life in Ruins which in the UK was called Driving Aphrodite. It stars Nia Vardalos as a Greek-American who becomes a tour guide in Greece, and takes a bunch of national stereotypes around various monuments for four days, during which time she finds herself, her Greekness and everyone learns a little something about themselves.
Ugh. Not awful, but not great, it has to be said. In fact, 'terminally unfunny' would be a reasonably accurate description of the movie.
What really annoyed me (more than anything else) was just how stinkingly inaccurate it was. It wasn't like any tour I've ever been on – tourists who go to Greece and go on a guided tour but who aren't even slightly interested in Greek history or anything else beyond ice cream and souvenirs? O-kay.
But when you have
- Incorrectly translated Greek (both written and spoken) – I mean whole phrases translated to mean something completely different ("2 or 3 or 4 children" translated as 'I love you', "Are you from…?" translated as "I want gay sex")
- The tour somehow going from Athens to Oia on the island of Santorini to Olympia to Delphi to 'the beach' to Athens again in four days in just a coach. Particularly when the tour plans included a trip to Thessaloniki as well.
- History that's completely wrong. I might not have a degree in history but I'm pretty sure that most Byzantine churches wouldn't have elements dating back to the 12th century BC, and since when did the Delphic Oracle channel Zeus (debates about Aeschylus aside)? Since when did the Greeks say Ulysses rather than Odysseus. Et – and might I just add – al.
That strikes me as dodgy – particularly in a movie that's essentially an advert by the Greek tourist board.
On the other hand, it was basically just a fluffy rom com, not a documentary,so it's not like it's the end of the world, nobody but people like me (ie gits) are going to notice any of that, and I'm pretty sure there are vastly more inaccurate movies out there. So…
Leaving aside things that are pure fantasy/science-fiction, what movies and TV shows are the most inaccurate you've ever seen? And does inaccuracy matter if what you're watching is enjoyable?
The Net was rubbish and hugely inaccurate, but Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and its bizarre view of English geography was still relatively enjoyable, despite Kevin Costner teleporting from Dover to Hadrian's Wall in a day without taking the M1 at least. Do you have worse movies in your collection?
As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.
November 26, 2009 | Reply
Inaccuracy doesn't bother me overly unless it's something glaring obvious. What's worse is when a show/movie can't at least sound convincing. Bonekickers for example, sounded like all the research came from a pop up book of archeology.
November 26, 2009 | Reply
Space: 1999. Inaccuracies abound. 'Science', fashion and technological predictions, portrayal of some characters meant to be human (Barbara Bain!). I'll be honest, I enjoyed some of it despite all that and perhaps it's true that you can love things or hate them or whatever completely irrespective of inaccuracies.
(PS I don't think that's actually Hadrian's Wall in Robin Hood: POT. Someone told me where that location actually was, but I've forgotten now. Your point about geography remains the same. Alan Rickman and Michael Wincott aside, I thought that movie was rubbish, and accuracy wasn't the problem.
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November 30, 2009 | Reply
@Aaron: what's the "inaccuracy" threshold before something starts to annoy, I wonder?
@SAF: IMDB says Hadrian's Wall, but it's not always right
November 30, 2009 | Reply
I don't mind them, especially when I know that I may have noticed them, but that folks in Peoria (or your side of the world) might never know there was something wrong. This usually happens with the juxtaposition of locations in movies and TV shows set in NYC.
For instance - in 'Hannah And Her Sisters', there's a shot of the famous "Little Church Around The Corner", followed immediately by Woody Allen talking with a priest. The inference being that it's a Catholic church; it's not.
Or in this most recent Thanksgiving episode of 'How I Met Your Mother', in which one character lost a turkey in a cab and it was retrieved at the Port Authority. That's not how it works for taxis.
But how about all those movies and TV shows that showed the near future, but now it's come and gone and those changes never happened - "Escape From New York", "Death Race 2000", "Soylent Green", 'The Jetsons'..... They were all just setting themselves up to be found inaccurate....