John Patterson has an interesting article up over on The Guardian carping about the liberties Hollywood has taken in adapting classics of British children's literature. The most recent offender, of course, is Miss Potter, directed by Australian Chris Noonan and starring Texan Renée Zellweger as Britain's beloved best-selling author, rather than any number of British actresses who could have played the part.

Patterson is (mostly, at least) tongue-in-cheek -- at least I think he is, I don't always grok British humor. But this is, after all, the same chap who, in writing about the religious right witch-hunting animated films, called Bugs Bunny a "flagrant naturist" and said of Foghorn Leghorn that he's "all about the cock" -- something that most American writers would be way too uptight to dare to say in print. Any writer who goes after Dr. James Dobson for labeling Spongebob Squarepants a "nellie" just because he holds hands with his best friend Patrick and watches "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy" is okay in my book.

Nonetheless, Patterson does raise an interesting point about literature adaptations crossing cultural boundaries. The Painted Veil, an adaptation of a book by British author and playwright W. Somerset Maugham, is about a British couple in China -- and the leads are played by Aussie Naomi Watts and American Edward Norton. Does the heritage of the leads really matter, so long as they get the accent down and do a decent job with the part? Patterson harps (and rightfully so) on Dick Van Dyke's dreadful accent in Mary Poppins, but he doesn't appear to take umbrage with Zellweger's actual performance in Miss Potter, just her Texas birthright.

Patterson ponders what S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders might look like starring the cast of Harry Potter (probably not any worse than the original, if they worked with dialogue coaches) and wonders how Americans would feel about our beloved kiddie lit like Little Women or Little House on the Prairie adapted with an all-Brit cast. The problem with Patterson's argument, though, is that in most of the cases he cites -- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter, the Narnia series, and even National Velvet -- the key roles were played by British actors, so I'm not sure what exactly his beef is with those films.

What do you think about the issue of adaptations crossing lines of culture and nationality? Should adaptations of works of literature beloved by a particular nation only be done with directors and cast of the same nationality? Do we really need separatism in our cinema? Or are some tales just so classic that they transcend borders, and it doesn't make a whit of difference who plays the parts?

[via Movie City News ]