2009 - SHERLOCK HOLMES, hated it

A  boring movie about a guy named Sherlock Holmes/Matt Helm/James Bond/Indiana Jones, who saves the world from an evil genius bent on taking over, haven't seen that plot for about a week or so.  The movie is directed by Guy Ritchie who is attempting to recapture his glory days as one of England's most stylish directors.

What we have here is the typically expensive holiday movie with lots of CGI effects, over the top action scenes and some decent actors trying their best to make the film a little interesting.  This is the usual stuff a movie studio thinks audience's want to see.

The movie uses the Conan Doyle characters, but they really aren't like the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson of the Doyle stories.  Sherlock Holmes, the ultimate "Mr. Know It All" is played by Robert Downey Jr., who is hot again thanks to Ironman.  Downey's OK if kind of tiresome.  Jude Law is an overly athletic Dr. Watson but at least he's British.  Rachel McAdams is Irene Alder who is in the movie as Sherlock Holmes's love interest which is a complete change in her character from the Conan Doyle story she appeared in.   It would have been nice if Rachel McAdams had bothered to attempt an accent or even to act.  She's not very sexy and wouldn't have made the  cut as one of Matt Helm's slay girls.

The director Guy Ritchie digs out his old tricks from his previous films Snatch and Lock Stock and  Two Smoking Barrels.  He uses lots of his slo-mo and sped up camera effects to make the action scenes interesting but after about the 2nd fight scene like that it's just tiresome.   The computer effects used to recreate late 1800's London look unusually phony even for computer effects. 

 

 Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous and unique fictional characters ever created, to bad they couldn't have written a better story for him for this movie.  Some critics have pointed out the similarity in story between this movie and Young Sherlock Holmes and there is no question the plots have a lot in common.  This is not meant as a complement as that was a pretty lame original Sherlock Holmes movie as well. I'm all for new and original Sherlock Holmes stories but rehashing Goldfinger or even  Quantum of Solace or some other old James Bond movie isn't my idea of a good time.  

About the only thing of note in this film are the ending credits which are kind of stylish, but that's only after sitting through 2 hours of this  junk.

 

Wtitten by  Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg, the running time is 129 minutes.