Thursday 23 September 2010

Not as clever as Cumberbatch

Sherlock Homes would have been more interesting if I hadn't seen the whole thing done a lot better. There's no Cumberbatch here. The film exists in a time when everything was brown and Sherlock Holmes didn't wear such a cool coat. Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are the squabbling couple that Holmes and Watson should be, but they also beat a lot of people up. Rather than playing games of Extreme Deduction to outwit the criminals, they're more likely to wrestle with them. I didn't really believe that this man was a genius. He has moments where he works out the best places to punch people, but that's about it. He is good at disguises though. All the ingredients are here, pumped up by a lot of Hollywood action. It's not bad, but Moffat's series was second and better. Of course it's important to appreciate every film on its own merit, but I'm unfair like that. The BBC's Sherlock must be available on DVD by now, so watch that instead. It must be good, because it's taken over my thoughts on a completely seperate film. There'll be more of each adaption, which'll be nice, even if I am completely bored of the Sherlock Holmes franchise (I'm calling it a franchise). I don't want to know which quotes are from the books, or who Moriarty turns out to be. I only want something mysterious to happen.

To be fair, there's a bit of mystery here. A bad man comes back from the dead and starts doing magical things. Disappointingly though, Holmes figures it all out after the big confrontation. He's not as clever as Cumberbatch. Nowhere near. Cumberbatch would have cleared the whole thing up in a day.

2 comments:

  1. Hated it. Wikipedia says the BBC Sherlock will be released in November in U.S., netflix is not yet showing it as available for reservation....

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  2. Yes, the BBC got it so right it's going to be hard to follow, or precede, for a while...

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