I saw it two nights ago with the parents (home for the holidays, hurrah)
I can see how if you were a Sherlock Holmes aficionado you’d be a bit miffed. Hell, I have like the entire Sir Arthur Conan Doyle collection on my Kindle (it was all free).
I’m not one. I’m vaguely aware of the Holmes mythos; the books haven’t aged in a way that I can enjoy them. I’ve gotten like 20% through most of the proper Sherlock Holmes books; I doubt I’ll finish. It’s just too old for me to properly enjoy. Not that I don’t see the appeal, it’s just like if you suddenly asked me to take an interest in music from the Civil War - sure, I can see the appeal and the historical value, I’m just not interested in hearing it.
But I know enough to see when the movie takes…ahem…licenses.
“Oh, I get it. Holmes is kinda like House in this flick.” (yes, yes, I know House was modeled on Holmes)
“Except he’s a MMA fighter now too.”
“…in the Matrix”
“Also, he dresses like he’s homeless.”
Dunno, I didn’t love the movie, but I enjoyed it well enough. It was a good popcorn flick. My dad (classic lover of “dumb, loud, violent films”) really liked it. My mom (sees every film that the critics love, including foreign) thought it was “OK” (probably boosted by the fact that she enjoyed the male leads). Like I said, I thought it was a decent popcorn flick. It won’t stay with me, but I don’t regret the ticket I bought. It was fun enough.
I sat there trying to figure out who Mark STrong looked like and all I could get was a Young Andy Garcia with an Accent that isn’t Latino. Stanley Tucci is spot on.
I didn’t get Iron Man 2 either. The Wolf-Man looks interesting.It looks like Hannibal Lecter is the Wolf-Man’s father. And I do mean Hannibal Lecter.Did anyone else get a trailer for Sherlock Holmes? That struck me as odd, although with nearly and hour of ads and previews, they may have felt the need to remind people what they were about to see.
I liked it well enough but was distracted by the fuckwad behind me who was kicking my seat. I honestly thought I was going to end the afternoon in jail.
Also, I couldn’t stop fixating on where the heck I’d seen the actor who plays Lord Coward. Well, I was pretty sure it was on “The Tudors” but I couldn’t quite recall who he played. Once I remembered it was Cranmer, I could enjoy Mssrs. Law and Downey.
Well, I think it was. I do think the quick explanations, with information only Holmes knew, was correct. I liked that he got rid of the supernatural explanation as well. Further, his ability with disguises is also supposed to be quite good. I thought they were all true to the stories.
What I find interesting is his age. RDJ is potentially too old for him. Wikipedia puts him as born in 1854 with one theory being as late as 1868. That means, in 1888 when the stories start, his age is from 34 to 20!
I mention his age because while I absolutely LOVE Jeremy Brett’s performance and still picture him when I read a Holmes story, JB was 51 when he started playing Holmes. Hardly in his prime as Holmes probably would have been in the stories. From that angle, while it was more action than the stories do contain, remember we only get Watson’s perspective of the action, not Holmes’. By the time Watson is brought into the story, [Edit: Or the parts in which he is involved in the story] it’s usually toward the end when things are concluding, not during the action. In this movie, we get to see the whole story and so it should seem different from the books, because that’s not what they emphasized.
Again, all in my opinion. I thought it was a good Holmes story. I liked the fight scenes and descriptions. I still think of Jeremy Brett as Holmes and I wonder if those adaptations with JB are true to the original feel of the stories as perceived by a Victorian. But, I think there is room in there for what this movie did.
Meant to say that we also had the Iron Man preview. I thought it looked amusing due to RDJ but would never have considered seeing it since that’s not my genre. However, did anyone else thing Mickey Rourke was scary as hell as that chain whipping, Russky type dude? At first I thought "Oh good, Mr. Rourke got another role. Granted, he looks like he’s reprising Randy the Ram, but. . . " and then they showed the scene with him marching toward Tony Stark with his chains blazing. Something about that scene made it very effective.
By the time they showed him on the podium at seven minutes to noon, I was convinced it was Stanley Tucci. In that scene, I could see that it wasn’t, but wow, what a resemblance!
I really enjoyed it but I think I shall have to see it again in a cinema that takes its audio a bit more seriously. My little local theater has their sound up too loud or something, and RDJ’s accent was especially hard to get. The true Brit accents were easy, but his (while spot on) was garbled in my little theater.
I was a big Holmes fan at one point, and then I was in a phase where the analysis of the stories, all the chronology and Watson’s wandering bullet wound (what? nobody mentioned that he had a limp in half in the movie?) and what a tantalus was became more fascinating than the stories themselves, because I got bored of them.
So I wasn’t expecting much of this movie. Worse, I had just watched a 1966 Holmes film, A Study in Terror, because it was on TCM for the first time. It’s a truly terrible film with an idiot Watson, though with a very physical Holmes.
But I liked this. Sure, you can go through and pile up flaws. It was too long. The final scene was idiotic. The CGI was horrible. The villain was worthless and the plot very dumb. I mean, dude, when you walk into a room with a dozen lords and cabinet secretaries and whatnot and announce that your big plan is to rule, all I could think was, aren’t you already?
But I did appreciate that they tossed in so many tiny points from the stories. They remembered that Irene Adler was from New Jersey and that Watson had a gambling habit so bad that Holmes once to lock up his checkbook and that Holmes knew buritsu (which is a misspelling of a form of jujitsu) and that Watson mentions a bull-pup on his first meeting with Holmes. The other movies always go for the gross details and not the little telling ones.
Sure, they went way overboard with the action scenes. But Holmes was a blend of cerebration and physical action more than most movies ever show. This compensated for the purely cerebral Holmes of the past.
We got an Iron Man 2 trailer. There were a couple of shots in the trailer that I swear exactly mirrored scenes in Holmes, especially the one where Stark is lying beaten in a road. Downey was playing Downey in both movies and it’s amazing that both work so well.
My boys are 10 & 7.