Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

There is a lot to like about the new Sherlock Holmes feature, but Guy Ritchie’s latest film evokes a few others, intentionally or no. The first that jumps to mind is “Bridget Jones,” solely due to the casting. Brits grumbled when Renee Zellwegger sloppily tried to capture the flighty charm of Helen Fielding’s character, but her undisputable foreign-ness was a roadblock nearly insurmountable. Robert Downey Jr., with his generally good but occasionally patchy accent, faces the same wrath.

The other film this one closely resembles is “Sweeney Todd.” Ritchie seems to be borrowing the CGI streets and artificial darkness Tim Burton put to use in 2007. It almost seems to serve as a companion piece. As Ritchie zooms through mysterious alleyways, chasing cloaked villains, one could almost expect to see Mrs. Lovett pining on a street corner, advertising her pie shop. As much as that film was about the discontent of gutter-dwelling murderers, this film is the opposite. Holmes and Watson enjoy their upper-class life in London, and I could hazard a guess that relocation would be impossible.

Arthur Conan Doyle captured the Victorian era in England well; only Charles Dickens can compete with him. And the beloved sleuth, pipe and stiff upper lip in tow, is the character that best summarizes the period, particularly for foreign audiences. In the past, English actors have gone at it with performances ranging from literally insane (Michael Caine) to ham-fisted (Rupert Everett), but the most beloved is the tweedy, intellectual sort, personified by Basil Rathborne in a “we are not amused” manner that characterizes the times more than it adapted Doyle’s book. In the original writings, Holmes was a drug-addicted, athletic man, and Watson was a competent doctor and soldier. This film takes those characters back to those types, and draws from the actors to create the rest of their dimensions.

Downey Jr. makes a convincing detective. Noticing that his wife is one of the producers of the film, I can’t help but wonder if she had any hand in his participation. He is equipped with his usual Method-y immersion into the world and character, but in the past has been less than skilled at where to point that entire obsessive, exhausting energy. His current hot streak of winning performances in films that match his talent causes me to raise an eyebrow and applaud Mrs. Downey if she’s been able to influence her husband as positively in his professional life as she seems to have been able to contain him in his now very reasonable private one. Enjoying every minute of paranoid sleuthing, Downey Jr. is both charming and, at times, petulant as a child, his talent for mystery solving leaving him emotionally stunted. He is no longer the frowning straight man, but the bumbling fool, a constant mess of corduroy jackets and patterned ties.

Jude Law plays Watson, and brings his typical more-English-than-you pout to the role. His attempts at annoyance constantly flirt with whining, and sometimes the bickering duo can come across too simpering, and, frankly, there is an element of feminine sabotage to their push-pull of a relationship. Law constantly kicks down doors, fences, and people, but he never has the physicality the role requires. His refinement, however, does play nicely off of Downey’s lack of ease. Law is quite capable of surly stillness and silence, and when he is in that mode he does his best acting.

Unfortunately, the film seems too preoccupied with its own homoeroticism. Both Holmes and Watson get love interests, the only point of which seems to be to disguise the sexual tension between the two leads. Rather than dissolve that attraction, however, Holmes’ attempts to seduce Watson back to 221B Baker Street to continue their gallivanting ways seem for reasons even more pronouncedly sexual. Holmes’ own love interest, played unconvincingly by Rachel McAdams (who just five years ago was still pretending to be in high school) really only appears to make Holmes seem more manly. Look! Sherlock kisses girls! But even Downey Jr. loses credibility in those scenes, and judging by the mysterious emission of some that appeared in the previews featuring McAdams in fishnets and lacy underthings, not even the editing room could make them work. Her random, totally modern American accent—she's supposed to be from New Jersey, technically, as the script clunkily tells us—just serves as another reminder that she is the typical, last-minute-addition, femme fatale. It all seems as threadbare as the kiss between Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann in the second “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, and “Sherlock Holmes” would have wasted far less time without her.

But those problems are something that the inevitable franchise will have to address in the future. What Ritchie and company have made here is a quite decent origin story. And like all other origin stories, there are setbacks. Every detail of every character must be painstakingly set up, and all without the relief of any standout supporting players or “the” villain. Like the Joker didn’t appear until “The Dark Knight,” so too does the major villain stay absent from this picture. But for an hour and a half, it’s entertaining to see Downey bring all of his Downey-isms to a stately Englishman and cavorting around town with Jude Law in his checkered coat and walking stick.

Both men are incredibly attractive. That is not to be overlooked.

My initial reaction at seeing the trailer was, “Holmes as Bond.” That viewpoint hasn’t changed much. Holmes is, for the moment, an action flick that has incredible potential to reach far deeper in the next go-round.