Holmes and Watson
Jan. 7th, 2019 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabidsamfanHolmes and Watson: A review
So, when Ashley Polasek and Brad Keefauver, both Sherlockians whose depth of knowledge I greatly respect, both came away from the movie saying it’s not that bad, I figured, what the heck, it is probably worth a matinee price ticket. Short review – yes. Especially if you are the target audience. Which, it turns out, is not the fans of Will Farrell, but the people like me who have tried hard to see every Sherlockian production that comes by.
Longer review (with spoilers) under the cut.
I did not walk in with high expectations. Then again, I figured if I could survive the Dudley Moore/Peter Cook Hound with my love of most things Holmesian intact, this movie couldn’t possibly kill it off. And I do recommend that you keep your expectations low. It’s not a great movie. On the other hand, it isn’t a rival to Ishtar, either. There are some draggy bits, where the joke goes on a little too long, and some slapstick bits that don’t quite work for me. (At least not at a matinee, I might have found them pretty funny after a long day.) But the overall plot makes more sense than the Asylum flick, and the relationship between Holmes and Watson is at the heart of the film.
(Sorry, Johnlock folks, it’s not that kind of relationship. But then again, this is a Sherlock Holmes who thinks a kiss will make a girl pregnant, so he’s kind of clueless in important ways that preclude going there.)
The nods to Sherlockian references are all over the place. Young Sherlock goes to school with a pet turtle, for a start, and they get “Elementary, my dear…” in almost straight away. This is also the movie with the “No shit, Sherlock” you’ve all been waiting for. And they had a tremendous time playing with both the RDJ movies slow-mo thinking scenes and the BBC text and drawing all over the screen thinking routine too.
There are jabs at our current president, and the system which put him into place, which may dismay some viewers, but I enjoyed. And a musical number which I won’t spoil because the only thing wrong with it was that it didn’t have more extras cavorting along.
Some famous faces appear. Ralph Fiennes gets to be the villain, and has fun gnawing the scenery, and Hugh Laurie gets to be Mycroft. He really enjoyed that too. There are background appearances/performances which it will take me the DVD to catch all of. I did see Charlie Chaplin in there, and Albert Einstein, but they weren’t the only ones. The Companion’s Room at the Diogenes was full of characters I need to sort out, too.
Yes, some of the jokes are crude, and puerile, but not as many as you might think. (And after years of going to the Gold Dust Orphans productions I have a high tolerance.) There’s a little more drug and alcohol use than I would have liked, but that’s a personal preference.
In any case, I’m not sorry I went, and yes, I’ll buy the DVD. And not just because it’s Holmes. It’s because I want to look more closely at all the newspapers and find the more subtle jokes. This is a movie that I think will reward multiple viewings, especially if you know your Holmes adaptations.
In the end, I think the movie was made with a deep love of Sherlock Holmes and his faithful Watson. And that shows.
Which is good enough for me.
So, when Ashley Polasek and Brad Keefauver, both Sherlockians whose depth of knowledge I greatly respect, both came away from the movie saying it’s not that bad, I figured, what the heck, it is probably worth a matinee price ticket. Short review – yes. Especially if you are the target audience. Which, it turns out, is not the fans of Will Farrell, but the people like me who have tried hard to see every Sherlockian production that comes by.
Longer review (with spoilers) under the cut.
I did not walk in with high expectations. Then again, I figured if I could survive the Dudley Moore/Peter Cook Hound with my love of most things Holmesian intact, this movie couldn’t possibly kill it off. And I do recommend that you keep your expectations low. It’s not a great movie. On the other hand, it isn’t a rival to Ishtar, either. There are some draggy bits, where the joke goes on a little too long, and some slapstick bits that don’t quite work for me. (At least not at a matinee, I might have found them pretty funny after a long day.) But the overall plot makes more sense than the Asylum flick, and the relationship between Holmes and Watson is at the heart of the film.
(Sorry, Johnlock folks, it’s not that kind of relationship. But then again, this is a Sherlock Holmes who thinks a kiss will make a girl pregnant, so he’s kind of clueless in important ways that preclude going there.)
The nods to Sherlockian references are all over the place. Young Sherlock goes to school with a pet turtle, for a start, and they get “Elementary, my dear…” in almost straight away. This is also the movie with the “No shit, Sherlock” you’ve all been waiting for. And they had a tremendous time playing with both the RDJ movies slow-mo thinking scenes and the BBC text and drawing all over the screen thinking routine too.
There are jabs at our current president, and the system which put him into place, which may dismay some viewers, but I enjoyed. And a musical number which I won’t spoil because the only thing wrong with it was that it didn’t have more extras cavorting along.
Some famous faces appear. Ralph Fiennes gets to be the villain, and has fun gnawing the scenery, and Hugh Laurie gets to be Mycroft. He really enjoyed that too. There are background appearances/performances which it will take me the DVD to catch all of. I did see Charlie Chaplin in there, and Albert Einstein, but they weren’t the only ones. The Companion’s Room at the Diogenes was full of characters I need to sort out, too.
Yes, some of the jokes are crude, and puerile, but not as many as you might think. (And after years of going to the Gold Dust Orphans productions I have a high tolerance.) There’s a little more drug and alcohol use than I would have liked, but that’s a personal preference.
In any case, I’m not sorry I went, and yes, I’ll buy the DVD. And not just because it’s Holmes. It’s because I want to look more closely at all the newspapers and find the more subtle jokes. This is a movie that I think will reward multiple viewings, especially if you know your Holmes adaptations.
In the end, I think the movie was made with a deep love of Sherlock Holmes and his faithful Watson. And that shows.
Which is good enough for me.
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Date: 2019-01-10 03:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-11 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-12 07:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-14 10:18 pm (UTC)The play really irked me. Good actors, good set design, good costuming, etc. BAD PLAY NO DONUT!