Sherlock Holmes
On a less angsty note, I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie.
You know, it really felt like this crew saw the BBC version with Cumberbatch as Holmes and simply gave up. A pity, I did like the Ritchie movie-verse of Holmes.
In the first movie, Downey Jr's Holmes felt like a believable take on the character, if you give room to some exaggeration on some of Holmes's traits. I accept the need for more action and more highlights on the man's eccentricity. But in this movie, he's barely recognizable as Holmes. Holmes is mad, but not that mad: in the first movie this is shown through him trapping flies in a jar (exaggerated but believable), in the second we have it hit over our heads with -- Watson literally calls him 'manic' while Holmes looks on with 'crazy eyes' in a room filled with tropical plants. Again, I suspect that they were going for Holmes as that bohemian Byronic figure in the first movie, only to see that Benedict Cumberbatch did a better job at it and weren't sure of what to do for the second. The result is a parody of an actor taking on the 'Byronic Holmes' role, all jumpy and nervy and not in the least bit resembling Holmes.
When Holmes isn't recognizable, the movie drops, but other things can still keep it afloat. Jude Law's Watson, in the first movie, is considered by many to be among the best Watsons we've had. Sadly his talents were mostly wasted. The only time I could feel 'that's Watson!' was in the beginning, as he walks through Baker Street for a grand total of a few seconds. Most of the time, Watson could have been any other buddy, but it probably doesn't matter now that Holmes could have been any other stock 'neurotic genius'.
The movie's fans on Rottentomatoes defend the film by saying that critics forget that Arthur Conan Doyle was really writing pulp fiction. In some ways this isn't entirely unwarranted; Roger Ebert claims to have read the books but forgotten that Holmes did cocaine, not opium, so you do wonder whether the critics were thinking of previous screen adaptations instead of the books. (I've always suspected that Holmes taking cocaine was a way of making him appear 'cool', like an arty person smoking marijuana, whereas if Conan Doyle showed him taking opium it would have been like a hero taking hard drugs.)
But there's pulp fiction, and there's ridiculousness. I'm disappointed at the lack of restraint here and the lack of dignity. You can make pulp fiction that is still -- well, respectable, for the lack of a better word. Guy Ritchie is able to do this; I wonder if the silliness in this movie is the studio's pressure for bigger means better, or Ritchie's own loss of creative direction.
In the last movie we had big action scenes, but they still felt comfortably Holmesian as long as you're willing to give Hollywood some leeway and accept that we need big action sequences. The ship action sequence is an example of that: it's a big action scene, involving a giant and a ship falling into the sea, but it still felt like something that could be in the Holmes canon, not in the grandiosity of the action but in the level of excitement it stirred. In this movie Holmes and Watson are running through some frozen woods while men who look strangely like Nazi soldiers fire at them with retro-futuristic bombs resulting in tree-splitting explosions. I almost expected seeing something with a mushroom cloud. It wouldn't be out of place in this Holmesian world.
Also, I'm disappointed that they had to make cheap gags at Sherlock's and Mycroft's expense.
To be honest, as a whole, I don't think it's the worst of Holmes pastiches. Fans of Sherlock Holmes had to endure Stupid Watson and all sorts of bizarre adventures in previous screen adaptations of our favourite duo. But it's far from a good one, and with the second season of BBC's Sherlock coming very, very soon, I'm afraid this movie isn't going to be remembered well.
By the way, the action scenes (particularly Moriarty and Holmes's) were quite well done. Guy Ritchie is an action film director, and if everything else flops in the movie, the action sequences nevertheless are great eye candy.
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