Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes
Jan. 3rd, 2010 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjIt is the nature -- nay, the sacred mission -- of Hollywood to seek out entertaining, creative, nuanced storytelling and to stuff it willy-nilly into the sausage casing of the current year's cinematic esthetic. Currently, this includes obligatory explosions and improbable fisticuffs. Hence the premise that the archetypally cerebral puzzle-solver Sherlock Holmes was actually a bad-boy drunken brawler who somehow managed to occasionally open his bleary eyes for five minutes at a time to toss on disguises and toss off solutions to criminal conundrums.
It is a premise that I find both bewildering and off-putting. If one's primary goal is to throw together an action-packed steampunk-influenced vehicle for displaying a half-naked (oops, 95% naked) Robert Downey Jr., there are far less improbable literary sources to work from. I don't have any particular personal stake in the canonical Sherlock Holmes (while I like the "cerebral puzzle-solver" aspect, his thorough-going misogyny makes him a hard character to identify with), but I do have a general issue with Hollywood's gratuitous gutting of its source material. (Hmm, perhaps a better introductory metaphor would have been to treat the original story as the sausage casing and the current take on it as the filling. This, however, would undermine the lovely source-domain mappings of the process of grinding up the original ingredients and mixing them will all manner of additives and adulterants. I shall leave it as it stands.)
If this movie weren't about Sherlock Holmes, it would be a lovely piece of steampunky action porn with a nicely realized visual esthetic and a delightful twist at the end ...
SPOILERS HERE! REALLY! SPOILERY ENOUGH THAT I'M GOING TO ROT-13 THEM!
... jurer nyy gur zlfgvpny, nagv-engvbany cybg-yvarf ner erfbyirq nf n pbzcyrgr snxr-bhg, fbyirq ol fpvragvsvp nanylfvf.
Ok, it's safe again now.
I describe it as steampunky, not simply because that's the in buzzword of the year, but because of the key plot elements involving retro-future tech, above and beyond the amateur scientist elements of the Holmes background. The steampunk threads, however, are nicely subtle and non-exploitive -- that is, they're organic to the plot and not simply thrown in to get a few more rear ends into the theater seats. The costuming is pleasantly detailed and evocative without being either slavishly historical or tooth-gnashingly off kilter.
I've seen a certain amount of buzz about the portrayal of the relationship between Holmes & Watson, but I didn't see it as particularly edgy or suggestive. It felt completely unmarked as a buddy-film relationship reflecting the way the original stories centered on male relationships. (It should be needless to say that this movie seriously fails the Bechdel Test, being retrieved from utter failure only in having three named female characters at all. However I don't believe any two of them ever appear in a scene together, much less talk to each other.)
Overall judgement: Mentally change the name of the movie and character to something other than "Sherlock Holmes" and enjoy a well-done costume-action flick.
It is a premise that I find both bewildering and off-putting. If one's primary goal is to throw together an action-packed steampunk-influenced vehicle for displaying a half-naked (oops, 95% naked) Robert Downey Jr., there are far less improbable literary sources to work from. I don't have any particular personal stake in the canonical Sherlock Holmes (while I like the "cerebral puzzle-solver" aspect, his thorough-going misogyny makes him a hard character to identify with), but I do have a general issue with Hollywood's gratuitous gutting of its source material. (Hmm, perhaps a better introductory metaphor would have been to treat the original story as the sausage casing and the current take on it as the filling. This, however, would undermine the lovely source-domain mappings of the process of grinding up the original ingredients and mixing them will all manner of additives and adulterants. I shall leave it as it stands.)
If this movie weren't about Sherlock Holmes, it would be a lovely piece of steampunky action porn with a nicely realized visual esthetic and a delightful twist at the end ...
SPOILERS HERE! REALLY! SPOILERY ENOUGH THAT I'M GOING TO ROT-13 THEM!
... jurer nyy gur zlfgvpny, nagv-engvbany cybg-yvarf ner erfbyirq nf n pbzcyrgr snxr-bhg, fbyirq ol fpvragvsvp nanylfvf.
Ok, it's safe again now.
I describe it as steampunky, not simply because that's the in buzzword of the year, but because of the key plot elements involving retro-future tech, above and beyond the amateur scientist elements of the Holmes background. The steampunk threads, however, are nicely subtle and non-exploitive -- that is, they're organic to the plot and not simply thrown in to get a few more rear ends into the theater seats. The costuming is pleasantly detailed and evocative without being either slavishly historical or tooth-gnashingly off kilter.
I've seen a certain amount of buzz about the portrayal of the relationship between Holmes & Watson, but I didn't see it as particularly edgy or suggestive. It felt completely unmarked as a buddy-film relationship reflecting the way the original stories centered on male relationships. (It should be needless to say that this movie seriously fails the Bechdel Test, being retrieved from utter failure only in having three named female characters at all. However I don't believe any two of them ever appear in a scene together, much less talk to each other.)
Overall judgement: Mentally change the name of the movie and character to something other than "Sherlock Holmes" and enjoy a well-done costume-action flick.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 08:09 pm (UTC)Holmes and Watson bicker like a stereotypically hetero married couple. Maybe that's what's edgy. :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 12:07 pm (UTC)It wasn't, indeed, Sherlock Holmes as we normally know it, but we thought it was tremendous fun and something I would definitely watch again on DVD some time.