Sherlock Holmes Open Review [krakatoa]

I'll leave the official review to Ace, and will just offer a spoiler-free perspective as a preamble to the moron spoilerfest to unfold in the comments.

As with any movie, I went into this hoping to be able to ignore the more blatant and almost ubiquitously non-sequitor digs at the military, Conservatism, and Americans in general. I was also hoping that I wouldn't have to forget too much about what I've long loved about Sherlock Holmes mysteries in order to enjoy a contemporary telling of Doyle's characters.

And truthfully that all took some of my enjoyment away, as I was internally preparing to cringe for a slight either to my politics or to the literary standard of Sherlock Holmes that never came.

This movie stuck to a great plot with terrific characters, and engaged the audience's intellect with all the clues necessary to solve the case with Sherlock and Doc Watson, and also involved us viscerally with some truly entertaining and physically believable action sequences that never quite made me sit up and say "Stop swingin' that big blue dork in my face!". All accompanied by a fantastic musical score by Hans Zimmer that was equal parts classical elegance, and rollicking pub music.

Smart, fun, and terrifically acted in every role -- I'll probably watch this at least once more in the theater if for no other reason than to catch some of the dialogue I missed while acclimating to the tempo and accents.

I give it 4 and a half Deerstalkers out of 5. I'm deducting a half-cap partially because I'm a stingy bastad, and partially to hedge against the surety that someone else will point out a good reason this wasn't a perfect movie, allowing me to say "Yeah, I noticed that too."

Guy Ritchie should have lost that Madonna sized tumor on his creativity long long ago.

posted by xgenghisx at 07:17 PM

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