Could have done better

Rating: 2/10 (9 June 2010)

I found the film to be utter rubbish - the Sherlock Holmes character was more like a cross between Steven Seagal and McGyver, and unshaven! He didn't "look intelligent" when he was trying to solve problems. His pipe wasn't right and some of his shirts – I wondered if they really existed before 1900. And, of course, his accent wasn't quite right – the English accent or rather English accents can be difficult to achieve and ends up as a mishmash of different regional accents. I find myself trying to sort out which regions and that spoils the film for me As for Irene Adler, at first I thought the American accent incorrect, but then realised that Conan-Doyle had her born in New Jersey in 1858, so she would have been around 32 at the middle of the construction of Tower Bridge.
The French speaking thugs had a French-Canadian accent - strange.
I agree that the special effects seemed to have been bought from a charity shop. All the buildings scenes seemed not right, not real. If you can't get it right, don't put it in!
And all the chase scenes, not very Sherlock Holmes-esquire, were nothing to do with what I had expected, as were the "last second saves" in the pig abattoir. The amount of violence was far greater than ever seen before in previous renderings of the great detective. I concluded that it should have been given another name, e.g. Herlock Sholmes, the Parody invented by Maurice Leblanc in his Arsène Lupin books (Conan-Doyle was, apparently, annoyed).
That just about sums it up – it wasn't Sherlock Holmes – it was a parody.