Margarita Movies

So, pretty much nothing curtails the MM posse from going to MM every weekend. Which is why the Saturday after Xmas found Roper, Williams and Lee getting terrible service from a Brotender with sick tats.  Fortunately, one of the regular Hotenders showed up and got us an emergency drink just before the Film of Choice was to begin.  As we got up to leave, i threw on my MM uniform - the yellow Cross Colors jacket.  I turned around to find an attractive young lady standing there.  She offered to buy my jacket off my back.  I kindly turned her down and turned to see both Nick and Han in complete shock.  I thought this would be a great omen for the movie.

As Sherlock Holmes would say, I leapt to a hasty conclusion without all the facts.

I have to apologize for the following review since I was just short of stone cold sober for the whole movie. Actually the movie starts off promising, sorta.  There is a big chase with Holmes and Watson tracking down a crazed cultist about to sacrifice some young woman to… er, something.  That really is never made clear and I didn’t realize that until I started typing the sentence.

Anyway, crime is thwarted although we don’t actually get any of that Holmesian (or CSI-esque as it is now) post-arrest exposition.  I guess that is ok cuz we didn’t really know what was going on anyway.  Then we find out that Watson is leaving Holmes to marry Mary.  This gives one the idea that we are coming in after all the other famous Holmes stories have already happened, like the scarlet one and the one with the ghost dogs and that other one with the League of David Carusos.*

Now, this leads to one of the problems with the movie.  If you aren’t a Holmes fan, you have no idea who most of these people are.  The movie does very little to tell you anything about them or how they met.  You just get those little Entertainment Weekly blurb explanations. “Watson, my best friend and carrier of the firearms, we love each other but can’t stand each other.” “Irene Adler you saucy American wench!  You are the only one to best Holmes!” “Comedic London Cop, I know that you will always take Holmes’ side!”

BUT if you are a Holmes fan then you are confused, because Guy Ritchie just borrowed willy-nilly (that is a Britishism!) from the Wikipedia page he read.  One of the subplots is about Holmes meeting Watson’s fiancee.  But Watson actually met her on a case of Holmes’, AT THE BEGINNING OF THEIR PARTNERSHIP.  For some reason, they keep teasing the identity of this mysterious guy behind the scenes, but if you know anything about Holmes you know it is Moriarty.  Stuff like that happens all through the movie, but that is OK.

What isn’t OK is that the movie is just dull.  Every scene is like a Wiki fact followed by a quirky bit of Robert Downey, Junior Detective.  Holmes never really shows himself to be any smarter than anyone else in the room.  The best reveals are given to Watson. What with the two guys in a buddy cop movie, one of which is days from retirement, it is obviously supposed to be a Victorian version of Lethal Weapon, but Watson and Irene Adler disappear for long stretches giving Holmes no one to play off of. The story itself isn’t really there.

Holmes captured this cult leader but the guy claims to have supernatural powers and demonstrates by making the guard sick. Then he gets hanged and escapes from the grave.  Meanwhile a big French guy starts chasing Holmes like a Steampunk Terminator, oh and Adler is working for this guy who wants to confound Holmes and steal a Victorian walkie-talkie.  Oh and something about taking over America, clearly inserted to make the American public give a fuck.

I wish I could make more jokes but to be honest this movie is an example of the greatest of Margarita Movie sins:  It is neither good enough, nor awful enough to enjoy.  It is just dull.

So, the SCALE scale:

STORY - 3. It just wanders around going “gee whiz Sherlock Holmes is like Batman but crazier” and kinda forgets what Holmes is known for.  Nothing is really explained just exposition’d.

COMEDY - 5. Actually there are some funny bits, though the set ups are all in the trailers.  Holmes intuiting the taser is a nice set piece.

AWESOMENESS - 2. I am sure that Nick will be yelling something British like “by the queen’s trousers!” but there is nothing you haven’t seen better, brighter and put to better use in a million other period pieces.  That said, Guy Ritchie still directs a nice SloMo fight.  They should let him direct a Bourne movie.

LADIES - 3 The lovely Rachel McAdams is prominent and even sans clothing but she actually is missing for much longer than I could be comfortable.  There are two other women, the sacrifice of the first scene and Watson’s fiancee.  Nick was in love with the Fiancee so she gets a +1 to balance the lack of anything else.  I am not counting the washerwomen in the background.

ETC - 1 the sets were quite detailed.  Uh, nice clothes. God, I am struggling to stay awake thinking about this movie right now.

*Believe it or not, those were lame but real Holmes references. I am nothing if not a nerd with a wide range of interests.

-Dan