Congratulations to Wild Mountain Thyme, a movie that went viral on Twitter because its trailer is just that bad. Starring Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan and Christopher Walken, it’s an Irish romantic drama written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, who previously won an Oscar, a Tony and a Pulitzer prize for writing. In theory, this movie should be good. In practise, it’s earning comments like, “BREAKING: Jamie Dornan to be tried at the Hague.”
The Wild Mountain Thyme trailer must be seen to be believed. First off, the Irish accents are appalling. They’re so clumsy that even Jamie Dornan sounds fake, and he actually is Irish. The actual story is also weirdly confusing, because the costumes and production design make it seem like the film takes place in the past… but then Emily Blunt drops a line about freezing her eggs for IVF treatment. This movie offers such a cartoonishly nostalgic view of rural Irish life that it accidentally feels like a historical drama.
Twitter users were dunking on the Wild Mountain Thyme trailer all night, mostly focusing on its depiction of Ireland and Irish people. The Irish embassy in America even weighed in, defending the trailer as “remarkably realistic,” which must be sarcasm because well… you’ve seen it. Even the scenery looks weird, suggesting the film used digital color-correction to make the grass look as green as possible. And there’s really no defending the accents, making the whole thing feel like a parody of Irish movies made by clueless foreigners.
People were similarly underwhelmed by Emily Blunt’s old-fashioned farmer clothes:
With its weird accents, dubious production design, and dated made-for-TV romcom vibes, Wild Mountain Thyme seems destined to be a flop. But if you do decide to watch it, there’s an amusing twist in store. The movie is based on a play that earned mixed reviews (or downright bad ones, from Irish critics). And several of those reviews mentioned a fascinatingly bizarre spoiler. At the end of the play, the main character Anthony (Jamie Dornan in the movie) reveals that he believes he’s a bee. Like, he literally just thinks… that he is a bee. So this movie may be a lot weirder than it looks from the trailer.