Sherlock Holmes
So, I saw Sherlock Holmes the other day, and I've been reading other people's thoughts on it, and all I can say is, Seriously? Are we talking about the same movie, you guys? The movie I saw was a bad spoof of Da Vinci Code with a bit of Dracula and Rush Hour 3 mixed in. It was just a lot of gratuitous explosions and trite plotlines and an incomprehensible fake accent by Robert Downey Junior, who acted like he'd done all his character work by watching House.*
It was a disappointment, through and through. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be some masterpiece of intellect, just fannish and fun, and then I read in a review that there's even some depth to Holmes' character that isn't evident from the trailer (WRONG), and I thought, Okay, I guess this might be worth my nine dollars, even if it does feature the undead.
But they got this movie all wrong. Sherlock Holmes is not Tony Stark, and he's not Algernon Montcrieff (and there's a role I'd pay to AVOID seeing Downey in). And he's definitely not the self-destructive idiot he was here. He's a quiet genius, kinda admirable but overall a bit bland. He exists as a vehicle for the plot, not vice versa.
At least the plot wasn't a complete horror. Since seeing the trailer, I'd known that all this supernatural stuff must be a clever pretense with a perfectly logical explanation, which Holmes would see right through. It must be. But by halfway though, I wasn't so sure. Everything else so far had been such a stupid Hollywood gag that I began to doubt, and then, to despair. Those cretins really HAD written a Sherlock Holmes story with magic in it, God help them. And in the end, Holmes was going to drive a stake through the vampire's heart and be a hero and Good would be restored and I'd go home and cry.
So I was quite glad to be proved wrong about that, at least. That was perhaps the one redeeming quality of this film. Well, and the slow-motion fight tacticking. There should have been more of THAT, not those ten-minute blurs of stuff being smashed. And, okay, that excitement about futuristic radio technology was kinda cute.
Oh, and I was thoroughly unimpressed with Irene Adler's presence purely as a romantic foil. And even moreso with all the people saying this film featured strong women, whatever they believe "strong" to mean. She did two clever things in the entire movie, and one of them served no purpose except as a setup for some nudity and crude humour. Although I guess the same could be said of Holmes.
But like I said, I don't even know if I saw the same movie you all did. Maybe I need to give it another chance.
I'm waiting until I can get the DVD from the library, though.
*But I guess it's a bit unfair to blame him. It's not his fault he keeps getting cast in such shite. Maybe I'm just prejudiced against this film because I'm still resentful of the two hours of my life that were wasted watching Iron Man.
It was a disappointment, through and through. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be some masterpiece of intellect, just fannish and fun, and then I read in a review that there's even some depth to Holmes' character that isn't evident from the trailer (WRONG), and I thought, Okay, I guess this might be worth my nine dollars, even if it does feature the undead.
But they got this movie all wrong. Sherlock Holmes is not Tony Stark, and he's not Algernon Montcrieff (and there's a role I'd pay to AVOID seeing Downey in). And he's definitely not the self-destructive idiot he was here. He's a quiet genius, kinda admirable but overall a bit bland. He exists as a vehicle for the plot, not vice versa.
At least the plot wasn't a complete horror. Since seeing the trailer, I'd known that all this supernatural stuff must be a clever pretense with a perfectly logical explanation, which Holmes would see right through. It must be. But by halfway though, I wasn't so sure. Everything else so far had been such a stupid Hollywood gag that I began to doubt, and then, to despair. Those cretins really HAD written a Sherlock Holmes story with magic in it, God help them. And in the end, Holmes was going to drive a stake through the vampire's heart and be a hero and Good would be restored and I'd go home and cry.
So I was quite glad to be proved wrong about that, at least. That was perhaps the one redeeming quality of this film. Well, and the slow-motion fight tacticking. There should have been more of THAT, not those ten-minute blurs of stuff being smashed. And, okay, that excitement about futuristic radio technology was kinda cute.
Oh, and I was thoroughly unimpressed with Irene Adler's presence purely as a romantic foil. And even moreso with all the people saying this film featured strong women, whatever they believe "strong" to mean. She did two clever things in the entire movie, and one of them served no purpose except as a setup for some nudity and crude humour. Although I guess the same could be said of Holmes.
But like I said, I don't even know if I saw the same movie you all did. Maybe I need to give it another chance.
I'm waiting until I can get the DVD from the library, though.
*But I guess it's a bit unfair to blame him. It's not his fault he keeps getting cast in such shite. Maybe I'm just prejudiced against this film because I'm still resentful of the two hours of my life that were wasted watching Iron Man.