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Denise and I saw Sherlock Holmes the other night. It was far batter than I anticipated from the wretched trailers, which seemed to indicate it was going to be a steampunk superhero movie. In fact, I liked it quite well.
You didn't click on the LJ cut by accident, did you? There are spoilers past here. Just saying...
Holmesian fanatics might even appreciate the movie to some degree. No, the script isn't from the Holmes canon, and takes some liberties with the characters. Downey's Homes doesn't quite match the Holmes of the books (or of the illustrations of Holmes from the period), but he does manage to make the character his own. Jude Law's Dr. Watson is actually far closer to the canonical Watson than the horrible Nigel Bruce version from the several 1940s films starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes. Bruce's Watson was a bumbling old fool who acted as comic relief. Law's Watson is a proper companion to Holmes: keenly intelligent himself, and as competent as Holmes in his own areas.
The script is the weakest part of the movie, not as painfully predictable as Avatar's, but too heavy on action and giving too fitful an attention to the characters who make us care about that action -- especially the two female leads and the villain. Rachel McAdam's Irene Adler is portrayed as your typical femme fatale, who doesn't appear to be enough of an intellectual match to Holmes to have supposedly foiled him twice. We never quite understand why she's doing what she's doing. Kelly Reilly's portrayal of Mary Morstan is better -- I found her character both believable and sympathetic, but she's given so little screen time and her character plays such a small part in the proceedings that her acting is mostly wasted. Mark Strong's Lord Henry Blackwood (who actually looks far more like the canonical Holmes than Robert Downy, Jr.) is a two-dimensional, cardboard-cutout villain whose motives, background, and intentions we're never really shown.
I also wish the film had been better at giving us the facts as Holmes uncovered them rather than withholding them until the Big Reveal at the end. That's a bit of cheat in the mystery field, where the reader is supposed to have the same information at hand as the detective. There are still loose ends that aren't quite tied up as well as they should be.
However, the cinematography is gorgeous -- in many ways, Guy Ritchie's vision of London is a parallel to Cameron's creation of the alien world of Avatar: a gritty, period-realistic Victorian London that is solid and believable, showing us both the squalor and the grandeur of the time. And, with the sub-plot of the shadow-hidden Professor Moriarty in play, we can expect to return to this London very soon...
All in all, this was an enjoyable B+ of a movie that I enjoyed watching. WIth a better script and pacing, it could have been an A.
You didn't click on the LJ cut by accident, did you? There are spoilers past here. Just saying...
Holmesian fanatics might even appreciate the movie to some degree. No, the script isn't from the Holmes canon, and takes some liberties with the characters. Downey's Homes doesn't quite match the Holmes of the books (or of the illustrations of Holmes from the period), but he does manage to make the character his own. Jude Law's Dr. Watson is actually far closer to the canonical Watson than the horrible Nigel Bruce version from the several 1940s films starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes. Bruce's Watson was a bumbling old fool who acted as comic relief. Law's Watson is a proper companion to Holmes: keenly intelligent himself, and as competent as Holmes in his own areas.
The script is the weakest part of the movie, not as painfully predictable as Avatar's, but too heavy on action and giving too fitful an attention to the characters who make us care about that action -- especially the two female leads and the villain. Rachel McAdam's Irene Adler is portrayed as your typical femme fatale, who doesn't appear to be enough of an intellectual match to Holmes to have supposedly foiled him twice. We never quite understand why she's doing what she's doing. Kelly Reilly's portrayal of Mary Morstan is better -- I found her character both believable and sympathetic, but she's given so little screen time and her character plays such a small part in the proceedings that her acting is mostly wasted. Mark Strong's Lord Henry Blackwood (who actually looks far more like the canonical Holmes than Robert Downy, Jr.) is a two-dimensional, cardboard-cutout villain whose motives, background, and intentions we're never really shown.
I also wish the film had been better at giving us the facts as Holmes uncovered them rather than withholding them until the Big Reveal at the end. That's a bit of cheat in the mystery field, where the reader is supposed to have the same information at hand as the detective. There are still loose ends that aren't quite tied up as well as they should be.
However, the cinematography is gorgeous -- in many ways, Guy Ritchie's vision of London is a parallel to Cameron's creation of the alien world of Avatar: a gritty, period-realistic Victorian London that is solid and believable, showing us both the squalor and the grandeur of the time. And, with the sub-plot of the shadow-hidden Professor Moriarty in play, we can expect to return to this London very soon...
All in all, this was an enjoyable B+ of a movie that I enjoyed watching. WIth a better script and pacing, it could have been an A.