the nadir

Rating: 1/10 (4 January 2010)

I guess what is more depressing than this abominable movie is the many laudatory reviews I have read here. Are audiences today so jaded, so utterly disconnected from even their recent past, so completely lobotomized that they would find kind words to say about such dreck as this? I had thought that the unspeakable 1979 pastiche of HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES with Dudley Moore was about as low as one could get in the filming of a Sherlock Holmes story. I was clearly wrong. This is the end, the limit, the bottom of the calcium-encrusted barrel. Holmes admirers (those who understand and appreciate the fine originals) will stay away in droves if for no other reason than the hilarious miscasting of the lead characters. Mr Downey as Holmes and Mr Law as Watson rank right up there with such inspired casting choices as Tony Curtis playing a medieval knight and Sharon Stone playing a gunfighter of the old west. Ridiculous.
I doubt that Hollywood's renowned contempt for its audiences can be better illustrated than by this movie. Do moviegoers really enjoy having their intelligences insulted with such grand insouciance?
It is both pointless and useless to go on. We have given up what little culture we have left by allowing these amateurs to take great classics and turn them into idiotic roller-coaster rides. A paying public that can applaud, let alone part with the money to see, such a movie is clearly a public that can no longer recognize quality.
Some years ago, just before he passed away, the great producer Darryl Zanuck said "I know audiences feed on cr_p. But I cannot believe we are so lacking in ability that we cannot dish it up to them with a little style". Why bother, Mr Zanuck? Apparently anything thrown out to movie audiences today will be lapped up like cream.
Stay home and read a Conan Doyle original.