Good movie, but abysmal New Zealand accent

Rating: 8/10 (3 May 2014)

I enjoyed this movie - it was better than I expected - but you can see plenty of other reviews about it.
I'm just appalled that in a movie with a budget of millions, they could do a whole lot of research into the Maori ta moko for Ben Kingsley, but then couldn't find anyone who actually knows the difference between a Kiwi accent and a South African/ Australian accent mish-mash. That's just slack, and insulting: "It's somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, it'll do." I sure- as-hell hope they weren't actually paying a dialogue coach to come up with that dog's breakfast of an accent.
OK, that's that off my chest.
At least it had a reasonable story behind it though (thanks mostly to the original novelist I suspect). Other multi-million dollar CG films tend to forget to hire someone to even write (or find) a story, so I guess the accent failure can be forgiven on this one.