Sherlock Holmes

[Frelga]

Go see it. It's fun.

[sauronsfinger]

I agree Frelga. I thought it was very good and well worth the price of admission. It took me a little while to accept a shorter version of Holmes, but after a bit I really appreciated the character as Downey played him. Some of the more negative reviews indicated there was far too much action but I did not agree with that. I thought the balance was fairly well done. Law was very good as a different type of Watson than the Nigel Bruce portrayals.

On so many levels, this is a far better and more satisfying film than AVATAR.

Eagerly awaiting to see what they do in the next one.

[solicitr]

A lot of fun (except when Ritchie resorted to the dang shaky-cam, which rendered the action scenes mostly incoherent). But it's a rollicking steampunk adventure fantasy, if one just forgets everything about Conan-Doyle and pretends these are two other guys called Holmes and Watson.

EDIT: One also has to 'forget' that the Houses of Parliament are nowhere near Tower Bridge.

[Lalaith]

I do want to see this. I doubt I'll get to it at the movie theatre, though.

[Frelga]

Actually, for what it is - a comic book adaptation, really - it's quite purist. His messy habits, his depressive bouts, the prize fighting, the shooting - it's all in the books. His messing with Watson's marriage (and of course in the books Holmes knew Watson's wife, since she was one of his clients) does not seem entirely out of character, since Holmes canonically avoids company of most humans except Watson, so it's reasonable that he would try to hold on to him. And of course there are many stories where the antagonist appears to be supernatural - hell hounds, vampires, demons.

I particularly liked that Holmes is shown as a scientist and a researcher, doing experiments, using references, and so on. Sometimes the perception of the character is that he's got these magic psychic powers, which glosses over the forensic and scientific work he is doing.

Still, they could allow him ONE shave.

EDIT: One also has to 'forget' that the Houses of Parliament are nowhere near Tower Bridge.

Irene Alder can run very very fast?

[sauronsfinger]

from Solicitr

EDIT: One also has to 'forget' that the Houses of Parliament are nowhere near Tower Bridge.

I wonder what percentage of ticket buyers to SH would actually be aware of that knowledge in the first place? Perhaps the British audience are, but beyond that I suspect very few.

Films do this from time to time. In the 1996 film CHAIN REACTION with Morgan Freeman, Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz, there is a scene where the two younger characters are being pursued through the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. They run up a staircase and emerge on another floor and attempt to lose their pursuit by hiding inside an actual full sized airplane which is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry some seven miles away across town. Now I have been to both many times and it was obvious to me as I am sure it was to the Chicago area ticket buyers. But how many other people were aware of this?

I wonder if Siskel and Ebert mentioned that in their review being based in Chicago?

[N.E. Brigand]

Films do this from time to time. In the 1996 film, Chain Reaction ... They run up a staircase, emerge on another floor, and attempt to lose their pursuit by hiding inside an actual full-sized airplane which is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry some seven miles away across town. ...
I wonder if Siskel and Ebert, being based in Chicago, mentioned that in their reviews?

Ebert did not. His only specific comment on how the film uses Chicago came in this paragraph:

The movie was directed by Andrew Davis, who made that other, much superior, chase movie, The Fugitive. Despite his impenetrable plot, Davis brings great visual interest to the film in a series of chase scenes set against a chilly winter landscape. He even finds a new twist on that Chicago standby, a pursuit up the Michigan Avenue drawbridge while it is opening. (What the twist is, I'm not sure; it looked like Eddie hid in the gears, but naw, that couldn't be.) Later Eddie and Lily flee to Wisconsin by train, rendezvous with an astronomer, and flee from a police helicopter in an ice boat, before turning up in Washington (either the movie doesn't explain how they got to Washington, or I missed it).

[Elmtree]

Actually, for what it is - a comic book adaptation, really - it's quite purist. His messy habits, his depressive bouts, the prize fighting, the shooting - it's all in the books. His messing with Watson's marriage (and of course in the books Holmes knew Watson's wife, since she was one of his clients) does not seem entirely out of character, since Holmes canonically avoids company of most humans except Watson,

My Holmes loving daughter, Willow, really enjoyed the movie and agrees for the most part with you. She found it far more purist than she expected. Said most movies mess up Holmes, and this one, despite taking some liberties, captured aspects of book Holmes that other films ignore or alter. She disagreed about him trying to break up Watson and whatsername, but only because Holmes did have manners. That was the one aspect of the character she found different... despite being abrupt at times, Holmes was not quite as unmannerly in the books as he was in the film.

I quite enjoyed the film myself. I read all the Holmes stories, but most only once, and not any in years. Willow reads and re-reads Holmes, and she could pick out all the bits in the scripts that came straight from actual stories (and apparently there were quite a few bits that came right from the books).