Since when did Sherlock need cheap gags?

Rating: 6/10 (3 May 2012)

To start off, let me just say that Director Guy Ritchie's special effects capture the viewer. The images of artillery shells slicing through trees in slow motion are, admittedly, quite cool. But once you get past those visuals, the story quickly wears thin.
Despite the spectacular special effects, A Game of Shadows' plot lacked. Watching Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law take on the world reminded me of Shia LaBeauf dodging hulking robots in the last Transformers movie. At the end of the day it doesn't really make much difference who the star is. Simply put, it is difficult to care much about either character when they inhabit such nonsensical, CGI-inflated tales.
Speaking of nonsense, allow me to talk about the naked man scene. For no apparent reason at all, a pudgy, middle-aged man comes out to greet his young, just-married female house guest one morning while wearing nothing. Did the scene get a laugh? Sure. Unexpected nudity often stirs the viewer to laugh; however, scenes such as this one reveal just how far one must stoop for a laugh. Additionally, I'm compelled to question why was it necessity to add the scene where Holmes and Watson share a sleeper car while the former is dressed in drag. This is the great Sherlock Holmes, remember. Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever add this little cinematic gem into one of his books? Absolutely not. I understand that Sherlock is eccentric, but Ritchie pushed the envelop here.
Equally squirmy, in a rather different way, is Moriarty skewering Holmes with a giant hook, then watching in catlike amusement as our ageless hero contorts and dangles, screaming. The extreme brutality of this scene left me wondering: Moriarty's a really bad guy and all, but was this scene really necessary? After all, Moriarty killed Sherlock Holmes' sweetheart without batting an eye, and he's plotting to throw the whole world into a war simply for self-profit. Do we need such a graphic scene to further this evil image? I don't believe so.
Perhaps I'm being harder on this sequel than I need to be. Sherlock Holmes 2 is a great jolt of special effects, paired with good character chemistry. It doesn't pretend to be the perfect plot. Still, even with the explosion-filled, theatrical thrills of A Game of Shadows, we need to be asking a couple of questions: What are we gaining from watching this movie? What kind of people do we want to be when we're done watching? That is not to say that we cannot entertain ourselves. A movie can invite us to take leave of our various cares for a time and transport us somewhere magical, inspirational, and/or sentimental. The result often can renew our sense of vigor, re-commit our love the ones we hold dear, or even help us determine to tackle any problem we may encounter.
But at the end of Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, I just felt numb.