So about that Sherlock Holmes movie.

[joiedecombat]

Saw Sherlock Holmes the other day. I didn't think Robert Downey, Jr. was really a great fit for Holmes (Jeremy Brett is always the definitive Holmes in my mind) but he did all right, and Jude Law, as I'd hoped, made for a superlative Watson. Yay for hot young Watson! May the silly Nigel Bruce version and his imitators be left in a dark, dusty cabinet somewhere and never brought out again.

I enjoyed the movie, and I think it was a reasonably faithful derivation from the original source material. There are things I didn't care for (many of them, unfortunately, related to the inclusion of Irene Adler), but overall, I liked it.

...I can't help but be a little annoyed by the sheer number of people who are complaining about Holmes actually fighting, as though it's so ridiculous that no one should have ever thought of it. Because it's not like he was an amateur boxer who could have made a living at the sport if he'd wanted to, not to mention being skilled with sword, singlestick, and Japanese wrestling, and who beat the crap out of the villains of several of his stories and sometimes gloated about it afterwards, and - oh wait.

And then there's the other silly stuff that people have said that I won't go into because Someone Is Wrong On The Internet and I promised not to argue with them any more.

"Surely the [original] Holmes wasn't this much of a douche," on the other hand, was just plain amusing, especially since I've only just rewatched the Granada adaptation of "Silver Blaze" and then re-read the story... the one in which, having solved the mystery and located the stolen horse, Holmes turns to Watson and says, in essence, "Right, that's all figured out, but I really don't like our client's attitude so I'm going to jerk him around for a while. Don't say anything to him about the horse."

Anyway, as a fairly deeply-invested fan of the original books and stories, I say it's an enjoyable movie and worth seeing.

Comments

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Boyfriend Guy and I are going to see it on the second.

How's Downey's accent?

[abaddonnox.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear the opinions of someone who has read the source material :) Because sadly, I have not :( I watched the movie xmas day and was also impressed with Jude's portrayal of Watson, thought Robert did a good job as well, but there was something up and I wasn't sure if it was him or how they had decided to present Holmes. Was he always soooo ... sloven in the stories? Overall, I thought it was a fun ride, though there were a few battles where I got a touch bored and thought they could have ended sooner >.>

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

You know, I honestly didn't notice anything about it. Which you can probably take to mean that it was at least inoffensive.

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

Holmes was, canonically, a terrible mess in terms of housekeeping and the depiction of his rooms in Baker Street was pretty accurate. He was mostly described as being kind of finicky and prim about his personal appearance, though, except for when he was in disguise.

[abaddonnox.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw the house mess as understandable, but considering Victorian sensibilities and the one/two stories I have read as well as previous adaptations, I did think him a bit meticulous about personal presentation, so that part of the movie just struck me wrong. However, I tried to keep an open mind since I'm not well versed in the source material. His hasty and thrown-together appearance seemed to be a more modern sign of eccentricity that they decided to adapt to help the audience relate, maybe ...

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

Probably. And to play up the odd-couple contrast between him and Watson.

[infinitepryde.livejournal.com]

I was primarily disappointed in how stupid the villain's plot was.

("Let me take over the people who secretly run England so that we can then enact a plan to take over England!" has got to be the dumbest move in a long, long time, but there are at least a couple of suggestions that it may be intentionally stupid on someone's part. And, well. One does not really require that impressive a pretext for that amount of fun.)

That said, I was expecting dumb fun with spots of awesome, and I got it, with more of both fun and awesome than I'd been expecting.

And Holmes is regularly that much of a jerk in the source material, oh yes. :D

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the villain's plot was pretty dumb, but I just kind of waved that off as Someone intentionally manuevering a particularly resourceful Crazy Person into position and letting him run wild for their own ulterior motives.

Because, well, it probably would not be the first time. :D