only in guy ritchie's sherlock holmes that sir arthur conan doyle's beloved detective gets a nickname of shirley. the film is pretty much like the first one, robert downey jr.'s non stop manic energy hit fever pitch that he reminds me of early jackie chan movies. it's enjoyable though, and i especially like the scene between holmes and moriarty dueling over a chess game when they are in fact poking holes in each other's plans - moriarty's war mongering ambitions vs. holmes' i-am-going-to-defeat-you-because-i-can. my only complaint is that i find downey's fake british accent extremely muddled, that at times i could not understand what was he saying. or perhaps i am just a little hard of hearing.
i don't know if other people feel this way, but i find holmes and watson touchy-feely-boyfriend-ly relationship comical in a good way...heck they could have made a cute, adventurous couple had watson not insist on marrying a woman - in ritchie's universe, that is.
Guy Ritchie wanted to go the extra distance and realise the homoerotic context of the relationship but Conan Doyle's descendants nixed that. But I think his version was very much how fanfic writers wanted it done on silverscreen. I have always read Holmes as intensely asexual and prefers living in his own head rather than deal with the messiness that is humanity.
ReplyDeletei read all of holmes stories and that's the portrayal i get too - the guy is highly intelligent and somewhat autistic socially..so a little humanity is much welcome with this fixation of his on watson..and i love it that watson always always says no in so many words but never ever left his friend behind for anything.
ReplyDelete