Sherlock Holmes

Movie review!!

If my enjoyment of this movie could be shaped like a graph, it would resemble a backwards checkmark. Being a sucker for all things Victoriana as a result of my obsession with Doctor Who, I expected a detective film set in turn-of-the-century London to be right up my alley. This demonstrates a) my complete ignorance of the fact that turn-of-the-century London falls into the Edwardian era, not the Victorian, 2) that I am still not yet the jaded old bastard I sometimes pretend to be on this blog, and iii) I can't keep track of how I'm numbering this.

At any rate, the film quickly went off the rails with all that magic stuff, with Watson's bad leg completely failing to impede him in any significant way, and with Sherlock spending the first half of the film being generally unlikeable, because apparently Robert Downey Jr loves playing alcoholic jack@$$es. In reality I'm being a little too harsh, because I did like the inclusion of Irene Adler (until she started occupying that usual damsel-in-distress role, that is), and during those brief blissful moments where it looked like Watson had gone up in an explosion of doom I thought to myself "well done, finally a film adaptation isn't afraid to tread that fine line between being a slave to established canon (The Lord of the Rings) and being an adaptation in name only (I, Robot), and it's treading that line with considerably more flair than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

I should also compliment the acting simply because nothing truly horrible stood out (and this comes with the caveat that I didn't wince the first time I heard the "you're breaking my heart" line in Revenge of the Sith, but I was younger and stupid then). And at the end when Holmes explains how no, there wasn't actually any magic, it generally made me feel better about the whole thing. Still, the CGI backdrops are woefully bad and the Moriarty plotline was irritating. You want to set up a sequel, do it like Batman Begins or Casino Royale. Don't make the next film's villain an actual player in this one.

I'm torn between saying "since the whole magic thing was a turn-off for me, you should have set it up that it wasn't magic more clearly" and saying "yes, there were actually enough clues to draw some of the same conclusions Sherlock did," but of course that first statement is just whining and the second statement is an outright LIE, because not even Conan Doyle gave his audience enough information to draw the same conclusions Sherlock did.

B+

Also, Hans Zimmer owes Ennio Morricone money for plagarism. Sherlock's theme is almost exactly the same as the tune the lockets play in For a Few Dollars More.