Who and Doctor Watson?

Rating: 7/10 (9 December 2016)

In older movies (specifically where Holmes is played almost to perfection by Basil Rathbone) Watson comes off as a senility patient in Holmes' care. By the time Jeremy Brett played Holmes to perfection (read the stories) he and his Watson(s) were equal partners. Now Jude Law plays a sensible young Watson with his life together and his wife in hand, while Holmes is reduced to crawling around on the floor.
The BAD: Robert Downey Jr is a good actor but he's not playing Holmes. While in private Holmes was not the neatest of men (see Brett) in public he was immaculately dressed, as Victorian gentlemen were. I apologize for saying it, but Downey ought to know something about playing a drug addict; but Holmes was not an addict, he took cocaine and morphine to reduce the ennui when he had no cases to hand. Conversely, when he had a case, he might spend days without eating, sleeping or dressing neatly while thinking. Calling this movie by the name Sherlock Holmes is a misnomer. . . or, rather, let us say Downey is playing a great Victorian detective of the same name.
But I'm a weird one. When I first started reading the Holmes stories in the 7th grade, way back in the early 1970s, I never liked Holmes much. I was a great fan of Doctor Watson and, until Brett's Holmeses came along I was disappointed Watson always looked a bit of an idiot (the worst being Stewart Granger's HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES with Bernard Fox as an absolutely brainless Watson).
SO . . .
The GOOD: Watson. He's young, energetic, masculine. Intelligent and not squeamish, as would be a man who went through Victorian medical schools. Good nerve, good shot, as a military doctor who performed surgery saving lives under fire. He only shacked up with Holmes the way young people today share rooms and houses, because they hadn't gotten their careers going. But Watson has his wife in hand, so he and Holmes won't be two middle aged men living together in a few small rooms.
Curiously, Watson met his wife through the real Sherlock Holmes, so that's another indication this is just another man by the same name, since Holmes and Mary Morstan have not yet been introduced.
Also GOOD, while so many movies and TV shows have talked about Holmes' abilities at deduction, this is the first time I've ever seen it filmed so the viewer can follow his reasoning. Kudos.
OVERALL, an enjoyable romp through Victorian London with the true Dr. Watson and a fellow named Sherlock Holmes. Downey and Law are both good actors who work well together; you believe they're a team. The movie has some very good ideas I haven't seen used before, it's exciting . . . but the fast cutting and execution of clues I think are meant to keep the viewer from getting a step ahead of Holmes by confusion rather than fair play. And while pastiches have often taken on supernatural elements, and in real life Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes' creator, became a wacky spiritualist, Holmes himself told Watson, "The world is big enough for us. Ghosts need not apply." Great movie for Watson fans (like me). But the pendulum has swung from the Rathbone/Bruce era of smart Holmes and dumb Watson; through the Brett area of an equal partnership; to now Watson being letter-perfect and Holmes being a basket case. It's time for the pendulum to swing back a bit.