Sherlock Holmes

It's not Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, but the new movie is a lot of fun. I saw it tonight with a group of young adults, and the ones who actually watched it enjoyed it. Directed by Guy Ritchie, it stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law.

trailer:


Variety opens with this:

If you can get over the idea of Sherlock Holmes as an action hero -and if, indeed, you want to- then there is something to enjoy about this flagrant makeover of fiction's first modern detective into a man of brawn as much as brain.

Roger Ebert gives it 3 stars and begins by saying, "The less I thought about Sherlock Holmes, the more I liked "Sherlock Holmes."" Salon.com says it "is entertaining in a glossy, mindless way". The Guardian calls the film "high-end hack work" and "a hollow attempt at modernisation" that "quickly grows dull" and says,

Sherlock Holmes baffles in all the wrong ways. Is it a cool satire on Victorian seriousness? A thriller? A comedy? At least in the past Ritchie knew what he was making, even it wasn't always much good.

The New York Times says, "The new Holmes is rougher, more emotionally multilayered, more inclined to run with his clothing askew, covered in bruises and smudges of dirt and blood," although I have to wonder from their review here whether the reviewer has ever bothered actually reading any of the original stories.