Really too silly for its own good but fun and occasionally has good spark to it

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2011)

I quite enjoyed the first Sherlock Holmes films, for all its limitations and irreverence it was pretty fun, so I was always going to return for the inevitable sequel. The good news is that the sequel sees everyone from the first film returning (albeit some of them only for a short time before being used as plot device), so I was hoping that the film would retain the strengths of the first, manage the slightly silly edge better and bring in Moriarty well. It doesn't quite manage to pull all of this off but it does have a decent enough stab at it, although it is unfortunate that the volume and the silliness appears to have been turned up from the first film.
The silliness is the thing that bugged me the most here because there is a fine line between having a sense of comedic fun that enhances the story and action, and a sense of silly daftness that negatively affects the same. The first film got the balance pretty good and made for an entertaining romp, this sequel overdoes it a little bit and at times the comedy is too silly for too long to avoid doing damage to the sense of fun. The same happens with the slow-motion "bullet time" effects – they are very nice touch but when they are used excessively they become less effective and a little bit part of the problem. Fortunately the majority of the film gets the sense of fun just right. The action is noisy but exciting and the lack of any sense of real danger or consequence is balanced out by the enjoyment of it all.
The addition of Moriarty is handled pretty well. OK in a blockbuster such as this there was never going to be a real clash of minds but there is a sense of intellectual game-playing between them that works. In particular I thought Harris was very well cast and got his performance just right throughout. The same can't quite be said for Downey. I enjoyed him again here but he overplays too often and gets dangerously close to spilling over into "Captain Jack" excess at times; not his fault totally perhaps but at times he is part of the "silliness" setting in. Law isn't as good as in the first film, mainly because the material doesn't focus on the comic interplay between the two characters as much – it still happens, but it happens within bigger events rather than being something of its own. The loss of this detracted from the film to a certain extent. In terms of supporting cast I thought McAdams got a rather rough deal – not only used as a plot device but a plot device that wasn't required! The addition of Rapace is good although she maybe takes it a bit too seriously at times. Good to see the series keeping a link to the character of Lestrade as well, even though he is in it for seconds and no more. Watson's wife I could have done without while Stephen Fry was a good gag done too often.
Overall then A Game of Shadows is perhaps too silly for its own good but it mostly manages to replicate the sense of fun that the first film had. The additions are mostly good and I will return for the third film (there almost certainly will be I imagine) but I do hope that they can prevent this series becoming Pirates of the Caribbean and instead focus on the core strengths that it has and play to those.