An Entertaining Movie, but it's Not Sherlock Holmes

Rating: 6/10 (14 January 2012)

While Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) is an enjoyable, thoroughly entertaining film, the characters of Holmes, Watson, Mycroft, et al. are so completely bastardized as to be unrecognizable to those of us who are devoted to the adventures of the world's greatest consulting detective. As was the case with the first Guy Ritchie Holmes film, Robert Downey, Jr. is the most un-Sherlock-like Sherlock Holmes since Peter Cook essayed the role in 1978's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Jude Law is slightly better as John Watson, M.D., though the difference is negligible. The most surprising performance of the movie is Stephen Fry as Sherlock's elder brother Mycroft. Easily the most unusual portrayal of Mycroft I've ever seen, the sight of Fry's Mycroft wandering the house naked must surely have Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, spinning in his grave.
This is a Holmes that not even Conan Doyle could recognize. Thank God that we have the definitive Holmes, in the person of Jeremy Brett, with which to console ourselves.