The Baker Street irregulars

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2012)

"All emotions were abhorrent to him. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world had ever seen." - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
Guy Ritchie directs "Sherlock Holmes", a fast, funny, but completely disposable "re-imagining" of Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic private detective. For a better update of Sherlock Holmes see 1998's "Zero Effect", which stars Bill Pullman as our detective and features a plot that is unofficially based on "A Scandal in Bohemia", an early Holmes classic. Hardcore Holmes fans regard the film highly, but not many know of it. See too "They Might be Giants", an underrated take on Holmes from 1971.
Still, Ritchie's film has some things going for it. It's a surprisingly under-lit blockbuster, Ritchie using muted, murky, messy lighting to simulate the grungy tone of late-1800s Britain. And of course Robert Downey Jr plays this incarnation of Holmes, the actor bringing a frenetic, schizophrenic timbre to the Great Detective.
In terms of plot, this is mostly junk. Ritchie's script is lazy and cheats often, Holmes magically solving problems, deus ex machinas whimsically conjured up and our heroes figuring out ridiculously complex problems simply because their screenwriters will closure into fruition. In Ritchie's defense, this is exactly how most Holmes tales functioned. Interestingly, while your typical detective story ends with a coda in which the hero "explains" and "ties together" the story the audience has just watched/read, Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" is packed with miniature mysteries within the main mystery which are "solved" using similar flashback/flash-forward devices. The film thus offers a "heightened" form of your typical detective walk-through.
The film's villain is Lord Blackwood, a character who may or may not possess supernatural powers. This is apt. Charles Darwin published the "The Origin of Species" in 1859 and Arthur Conan Doyle his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887. It is commonly thought that Doyle's hero owed much to the development of the nineteenth century scientific method, with its emphasis on observation, logic, deduction and a dash of imagination and daring, but Holmes, with his unbelievable gifts for problem solving and frequent impossible leaps of logic, was originally meant as a joke, a mockery of the flurry of scientific discoveries that the era saw being made. Doyle was himself fond of mysticism, spiritualism, magic and often wrote about the Dark Arts. He cooked up Holmes as an attempt to ridicule that which he believed was slowly killing off various branches of enchantment, religion and spirituality. Of course this backfired completely. People are fond of order, control and the commanding aura of Holmes, and quickly took the detective to heart. From then on, Doyle found himself unable to abandon the character.
Ritchie's film stars Jude Law and Rachel McAdams in supporting roles, but they're not given much to do. The film features some neat, Victoria-era scenery, most of it CGI paintings. The sequel's even funnier.
7.9/10 - Better Holmes flicks: "Zero Effect", "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939), "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1939), "They Might Be Giants" (1971). Worth one viewing.