Bryan Brown, Republican

I caught ‘Along Came Polly’ the other night on the telly, and it was funny and done with a good deal of style, which is all you can ask of a romantic comedy.

As is often the case with this kind of film, there were many joys to be had if you had your eyes open. Hank Azaria (of ‘The Simpsons’) sports a French accent of immense silliness (“Are you for scuba?”).


He is only outdone in the pantheon of silly French accents by Sacha Baron Cohen in ‘Talladega Nights’, which has to be heard to be believed...


and of course John Cleese in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’


I was amused, seeing the film again on TV the other night, to see Bryan Brown’s impersonation of a huntin’ and shootin’ kind of Australian bloke, the kind of archetypal Aussie that exists nowhere outside of Steve Irwin and ‘Crocodile Dundee’ movies.

Something I hadn’t noticed the first time was that in many sequences Bryan was sporting a white baseball cap with the logo of the Australian Republican Movement very prominently on the peak. (Note: this is not Republican in the American sense, but rather being in favour of chucking the Queen of England as Australia's official Head of State).

Cheeky bugger. I bet the costume designers didn’t come up with that one all by themselves.