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HOLMES & WATSON
Director: Etan Cohen Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Rebecca Hall, Kelly Macdonald, Ralph Fiennes, Rob Brydon, Pam Ferris, Lauren Lapkus, Steve Coogan, Hugh Laurie, MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:29 Release Date: 12/25/18 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 25, 2018 The nature of Sherlock Holmes has been evaluated, criticized, mocked, and re-evaluated so many times that one wonders if the process of assessing, adjusting, re-assessing, and re-adjusting the character has run its course. This feeling is especially strong while watching Holmes & Watson, a miserable attempt at a comedy about the Holmesian mythos, which has no idea what it wants to say about the character or how it wants to redefine him. It's as if the filmmakers stumbled upon the sets, the costumes, and the props from another production of a Holmes mystery, but they didn't bother to bring along a script, a basic idea of what they wanted to do with Holmes and his world, or even a single workable joke. It opens with a flashback to a young Sherlock (Hector Bateman-Harden) arriving and being bullied at a boarding school. After he's tricked into kissing the rear end of an ass, the boy shuts off all of his emotions and becomes driven by pure logic, using his deduction skills to get every other student who tormented him expelled. With only one student remaining, Sherlock's teachers transform him into an intellectual giant, and decades later, he's the great detective solving crimes of all sorts. Except, this version of Holmes, played by Will Ferrell, is a very silly buffoon, who almost misses the court date of his archnemsis Moriarty (Ralph Fiennes) because he's too busy practicing his dramatic entrance into the courtroom and trying to figure out which hat to wear. Except, he actually isn't a buffoon, because he can calculate with exact precision how to hit a plague-ridden mosquito with a cricket bat—without breaking the glass on which the insect has landed. Except, he is a nitwit, because the glass, housing a hive of killer bees, breaks anyway, causing Holmes to scurry around the apartment like a boob. Except, he isn't a clown, because he makes it to court just in the nick of time. Except, he is a fool, because he convinces the judge to let Moriarty go free, because a criminal mastermind such as Moriarty would never be so careless as to leave behind so much evidence. Except, he isn't a dolt, because he turns out to be completely correct, which makes the entire build-up to the joke that Holmes is an idiot completely pointless. You get the idea. The idea—beyond the fact the jokes are so random and shallow and frantic—is that the screenplay by director Etan Cohen has no clue whether its version of Holmes is an idiot, an actual genius, or an accidental genius. Depending on the course of the plot and, apparently, the whims of the actors, the character is whatever the movie requires him to be at any given moment. Without a lick of consistency in regards to the character, there simply isn't a foundation for any humor, save for the random, ineffective sort that happens when nobody has any idea as to what they're trying to accomplish. It doesn't help that Holmes' devoted assistant and foil Dr. John Watson (John C. Reilly) is also a blithering nincompoop. He arrives in court shooting wildly and is completely flabbergasted when Holmes shows off his proficiency in the art of disguise—a fake mustache that even fools the doctor when Holmes puts it on in front of him. There aren't any firm rules for comedy, of course, but surely, this dynamic breaks one of the unspoken ones: The members of comedy duo have to be distinct in some way, or you're just telling the same joke over and over again and again. At this point, there's little more to say, because the movie is an abject failure as a comedy from the start. It is worthwhile—if only to belabor the point of the movie's abundant shortcomings—to state that Holmes & Watson has—and completely wastes—a sturdy supporting cast, from Rebecca Hall (as an American doctor who gets frisky during an autopsy), to Kelly Macdonald (as the landlady Mrs. Hudson, who's now a sex worker on the side, apparently), to Steve Coogan (as a one-armed tattoo artist), to Hugh Laurie (as Holmes' brother Mycroft, who can communicate telepathically with his sibling), and to Rob Brydon (as the level-headed Inspector Lestrade, whose suspicion of Holmes' incompetence seems like a joke, until Holmes occasionally and arbitrarily becomes competent). Everyone here deserves better—except, perhaps, anyone who thought this was a good idea. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for crude sexual material, some violence, language and drug references)
