The moaning of a Holmes fan: a part 8 that shouldn't exist

Earlier today, I was talking to Judge Bookman. The topic was Dracula. The new BBC series. And as we discussed adaptations of wonderful series that made us angry...

I remembered.

I remembered what I had tried so hard to forget.

The adverts.

The trailers.

The things I had tried to forget.

I know I had already completed my Sherlock Holmes adaptations series. But, unfortunately, another adaptation came out.

And, after a year of trying to pretend it didn't exist... I have seen it. So you don't have to.

Here is my review of Holmes and Watson.

I'm sorry.

The idiot (Sherlock Holmes):

I don't really know what to say. Did I see Sherlock Holmes on the screen?

No.

What I saw was a parody of Robert Downey Jr. portrayal of the character, only without the charm, intelligence and wit. Also, he has a "love interest". I don't like Sherlock Holmes having a love interest. Especially not when they character is originally presented as "having a mental age of a four year old". She is a disrespectful idea of a character with a learning disability, which she later reveals to be faked so she can study Holmes' ego. Nevertheless, seeing Holmes sexually attracted to someone who he believes to have the mental capacity of a four year old is... It's not just me, right? That is VERY CREEPY.

What else can I say? To be fair, I think the acting is the real problem. It's more the... idea. The concept. Imagine Sherlock Holmes, but take away all the things that make him Sherlock Holmes, make him egregiously exciteable, and don't let him stand still for a single moment? What could go wrong???

There is also the question of whether this character (who I was sort of expecting to be revealed as an impersonator at any moment) is actually intelligent at all. True, he spots that the supposed Professor Moriarty is a fake, and can communicate with his brother with the power of his thoughts alone. He also releases a swarm of killer bees while trying to contain a single mosquito, and while trying to pull of Robert Downey Jr's fighting trick (you know the one, with the dramatic speech, prediction of responses to actions, awesome slow-mo shots) singularly fails to defeat a single opponent in combat. He gets distracted by his love interest, preventing him from being able to run over to a bomb and stop it from killing the Queen. In short, it seems he's being played as having both Holmes-like intelligence, and being so overconfident that you wonder if he's actually above average intelligence at all.

As to the score I give this portrayal....

How about -10,000 killer bees out of 1 mosquito?

The other idiot (Watson):

See Holmes. Overdone. Overexcited. Falls in love with femal doctor. Makes many jokes about femal doctor being unusual, and that America must be so progressive for allowing one (fun fact, from 1876 onwards, women were allowed to become licensed as doctors in the UK by law. The maiden voyage of the Titanic, which happens at the end of this film, was in 1912. Pretending female doctors were unheard of at this time is....disrespectful? Perpetrating stereotypes? Just plain WRONG?????)

Apologies for the tangent. I just think it's important the history of women in medicine is not misrepresented. 

So. Watson. Um.... He's.... well.... I think they made him appear even more stupid than Holmes. Which takes effort. I've never seen such a useless Watson. The whole film is about him feeling useful, about him being an equal partner to Holmes, instead of just an associate. The problem is, that really is all he is. And he's not even very good at that.

0/10

I don't care any more.

The other Characters:

Well, really there are too many to mention. There's Moriarty (two, in fact), Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft, the baker street irregulars....

I think the screen writers just watched other adaptations (and I can guess at least one of them...) rather than reading the original stories, putting in every character that occured in any of them. At least they didn't include Irene Adler. Though they did have a couple of American ladies to win over the titular duo's hearts. 

The only character I actually thought was fun, was Mycroft. Because he was played by Hugh Laurie, and Hugh Laurie is always hilarious. Except he was in one scene. And it was a compeltely useless scene with no point to it at all. He was still funny though. Unfortunately, the effect of that was that I decided I wanted to see Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as Holmes and Watson in a comedic adaptation. I mean, Laurie has already played Dr House, a very loose adaptation of Holmes, and Fry is Mycroft in the Sherlock Holmes films with RDJ... It would be amazing, is all I'm saying. Also, while researching this post, I discovered Fry has narrated at least some Sherlock Holmes audiobooks. So something good has come out of this.

Anyway, I need to come up with a score....

meh.

The rest of it:

Here, I thought I would just make a list of things that made me feel uncomfortable. I'm not sure where exactly they fall in the scale of "Oh, that's fine. Just a joke" to "This is downright offensive". I'll let you decide.

1:The Titanic. Numerous jokes are made about the Titanic, from saying it will forever be connected with John Watson after the final showdown of the film takes place in it's ballroom, to having two of the main characters depart in it at the end of the film. Yay, two characters are going off to America in a ship that everyone knows will never arrive! Comedy!

2: Suicide jokes. The film opens with Holmes and Watson meeting for the first time, when Watson is on top of a roof about to commit suicide. Holmes is distracted by his giant marrow, which he doesn;t want Watson to fall on. He tells Watson to go find another roof, take poison, and that he will shoot him in the heart himself if he will just not jump on top of his marrow. Watson doesn't jump, but he does slip and fall onto the giant marrow, leaving Holmes devastated. Good taste? What's that?

3: Body dysmorphia jokes. Because suicide wasn't enough. There is a scene where Holmes has poisoned Watson. For fun, it seems. One symptom that Holmes dictates is "body dysmorphia". As he describes this symptom, Watson looks in a mirror and screams in a high pitched voice about how fat he looks. Sure. Funny.

4: Aforementioned woman with learning disability being object of Holmes' sexual advances. The fact that it later turns out that she does not have a learning disability... doesn't make this better

5: The whole lack of knowledge around the history of females in medicine.

Now, the list of things which aren't necessarily terrible or offensive.... just unfunny.

1: Hannah Montana quotes at the start of the film. I suppose the point is that you can quote anyone. Point made. My point would be that just because you can quote anyone doesn't mean that you should.

2:The word "bitch" being used in the first 2 minutes of the film. In Sherlock Holmes.
3: Sherlock Holmes suddenly being a massive gardening fan, leading to him growing a giant marrow, leading to Watson breaking it. This is never mentioned again. It wasn't for a case. It's just... There.
4: Sherlock Holmes nearly missing the trial of James Moriarty because he releases a swarm of killer bees. A big deal is made of him almost turning up late. And then he doesn't. More time wasted on things inessential to the plot.

At this point, I don't think I can go on any more. This film isn't funny. It isn't a good adaptation. If it had been done well, I think it would have been like a cross between the newly discovered casebook of Sherlock Holmes, the bbc radio spoof, and the Sherlock Holmes films with RDJ. Both of these adaptations are funny. Both of them work.
Holmes and Watson isn't, and doesn't. It's not even a film that's "so bad it's good". It's "so bad it's bad". I can't recommend watching it. I can't even bring myself to give it a score.
I'd like to say we can learn from this
Actually, we can. We can learn that what the world really needs is a Fry and Laurie Sherlock Holmes adaptation. Please.