Film Review: "Sherlock Holmes"

[flowrs4ophelia]

I'll admit all I know about the Sherlock Holmes stories is learned from episodes of Wishbone plus the general collective consciousness of pop culture. But I'd like to think even if I were a very knowledgeable fan of the classic character I'd be able to get past this movie's almost complete irrelevance to that Holmes, as I'm usually annoyed by purism of any kind as a sole reason for criticizing something. No timeless characters were harmed in the making of this film, and in fact it seems like Guy Ritchie must have made it with complete awareness that the more ridiculously he strayed from the original material, the more effective it would be in establishing that this isn't supposed to be anything but fun and crazy and its own thing. Honestly, if this was just about original characters and didn't have the added outrageousness of actually being called Sherlock Holmes, what would be the fun in that?

With that said, even as a simply entertaining movie with only very basic connections to the original stories, it actually manages to forget at some points not to take itself too seriously and could have been a more consistently fun one to watch. Even most of Tim Burton's darkest movies are handled in a tongue-in-cheek enough way that there's no relief needed from the macabre atmosphere, but when the humor stops being very prevalent in this and the visual style of it loses its allure a while after the first hour, it gets to be a sort of hollow and dreary experience to sit through before the very end.

The central problem is that the actual mystery story is very unremarkable, with such a predictable outcome that the mechanisms through which Holmes comes to his conclusions by the end seem arbitrary. A good mystery should shed a whole new light on the entire story up until the point the secrets are revealed, but the "Tom Riddle Explains It All" moment at the end doesn't illuminate much except that Holmes is really smart, which we already know. With everything else from Conan Doyle's conception of this character that this film throws out the window with its focus on action spectacles and bromantic comedy, does it even need to have a very interestingly developed case with surprising discoveries? I think maybe not, but all I'd ask is that they'd made it less complicated so that the runtime didn't overstay its welcome getting through all the details. By a certain point I realized I'd stopped paying much attention to the facts of the case altogether because I just didn't really care.

Much more entertaining is the story of the impending end of the partnership between Holmes and Watson, who is getting married soon, which of course keeps becoming extended for one reason or another despite Watson's intentions to get away from the madness of working with him. Described as "brothers not in blood but in bond," the two have one of those classic inseparable kind of relationships in which one of them can't believe how much he puts up with from the other but also knows there's nobody else to put up with him and keep him from doing anything too insane. Naturally, Holmes does some rather pricky things to passive-aggressively attempt to sabotage the relationship between Watson and his wife-to-be Mary. The bickering exchanges between them are pretty hilarious without sounding too modern or the humor getting cheesy. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law work well as an unlikely kind of pair, and I get the impression that they not only got paid but had a lot of fun using their talent in this kind of movie.

Hardly anyone can talk about this relationship or even the movie in general without bringing up the blatant homoerotic subtext. Indeed, Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler is practically pointless as a love interest for Holmes, though not an unenjoyable character, and is ultimately present for a greater purpose...I'm just not sure I could tell you what it is because I tuned out of absorbing all the plot details after a while. With the amusingly domestic dynamic between Watson and Holmes beating you over the head too much for anyone to possibly miss it, this might as well be an expensively made and widely distributed work of fanfiction, which means if Conan Doyle is truly rolling in his grave over it he'll have to join a very big club.

Comments

[peripety]

From the previews it looks to me like a pretty typical "buddy" movie on which they slapped the Sherlock Holmes name so it hasn't made me want to go see it. It's kind of sad that even if the banter was amusing most everything else falls flat.

Thanks for sharing your review!

[meiou-set.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to read that the mystery wasn't a huge a-ha moment. One would expect that particularly from a movie that takes on such an icon of ratiosination. Then again, Ritchie is known for his love of action, no? (although to be honest his films haven't really stood out to me--I tried both Snatch and RockandRolla and was bored at both).

I'm glad the interaction was neat though. Thanks for the review, I think I might just wait for this one to hit dvds.

[flowrs4ophelia.livejournal.com]

I was somehow convinced to go see the movie again and for some reason I enjoyed it a lot more that time (not that there are a lot of layers and subtleties to catch with multiple viewings or anything, lol, I just think I wasn't in the greatest mood the first time or something). It's still not a great work of art of a film by any means but I'd say it's definitely worth renting eventually.