Surprisingly close to the spirit of Doyle's stories

Rating: 8/10 (23 May 2011)

Just to get this out of the way first, Doyle's "Lost World" got quite a bit of the science (as it was known then) right, but it was terribly inaccurate in many places, for example, a volcano erupting in a sandstone plateau. However, that's what the readers and he envisioned, and he wrote it that way; it worked. The movie in 1925 was even more inaccurate, and really sliced up the book, but Doyle made a cameo in it and by all accounts enjoyed it quite a bit. The point is, the Sherlock Holmes canon should be always treated with deep respect but not absolute veneration; rather, with a spirit that its author might have enjoyed.
This movie, "Sherlock Holmes," gets most of it right:
1. The opening focuses on building the relationship between Holmes and Watson; it may be a sign of the short attention spans of this age that they actually had to resort to a glance between the two when somebody talks about "brothers."
2. The visual interpretation of Holmes' thought processes and contrast between that and his later, incomplete verbal explanations is perhaps the most powerful insight I've seen yet into how Sherlock Holmes worked in the stories. It's also extremely well done. Kudos!
3. Direct sampling of many different stories. (***SPOILER FOLLOWS***) To the excellent list here at IMDb, I would add the last scene of Holmes and Adler on the bridge, with the approaching thunderstorm, as a reference to the ending of "His Last Bow" (more on this later) ***SPOILER ENDS***)
4. The occasional meanness of Holmes here is not too different from the post-Reichenbach Falls Holmes.
5. "His Last Bow" is one of the few stories in the canon told from Holmes' viewpoint, and that is really how this whole story is told, from the viewpoint of the most interesting and complex character. That may have influenced how they ended the film's climactic scene.
What they didn't get right include the fist fight (injuries overall really didn't get that dramatic until after gloves were introduced and boxers could hit harder without risk of hurting themselves; also, Holmes as himself rather than a street character could have only fought in the gentleman's version, not a pit); the lack of that courteous and gentle streak in him that Doyle included; the representation of Victorian London (Andrew Mayhew's description of the slums was effective precisely because most of parts of the town where the action takes place were clean, relatively safe, and decent places full of people well enough off to be able to care about the poor).
However, that representation of London works if you quickly adopt the reference frame that this is a Bizarro version of the setting (as we do in the 2009 version of "Star Trek"); once that's done, it really is a treat to see how closely they actually stay to the original spirit.
Other treats include:
1. The Jeremy Brett homages, IMO, used in Downey's characterisms and voice.
2. Irene Adler (obviously this one never sang in an opera, but remember...Bizarro London).
3. The bonds and bickering between Holmes and Watson, of the sort that the good doctor would naturally have left out of his reports but which the movie explores in depth.
4. Watson himself (best movie Watson ever!).
5. That last scene, because it is so radically different from the stories and yet so close to them in spirit. It is also awesome.