Grade:
A

What’s it About?
The most famous detective in English literature solves crimes and uncovers a conspiracy in 1890s London.

What’s It’s Bechdel Test Score?
1/3, which is incredibly good for Guy Ritchie films. Irene Adler is awesome, but neither of these things prevents the movie from failing this test spectacularly.

What About Minorities?
Since this takes place in 1890s London and I have no idea how many non-white people were living at the time, I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt. There is an Irish “gypsy woman” but it didn’t come across as offensive to me or anything.

I’ve always more or less loved Guy Ritchie movies. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by one that I saw. I didn’t see Revolver or Swept Away for that very reason. But man, Snatch and RockNRolla are definitely among my favourite films.

So I was very excited for Sherlock Holmes, and being excited about a movie is a dangerous place to be in. I usually try to avoid trailers and previews and reading reviews before seeing a movie to keep my expectations low or non-existent, which is a pretty good rule. But I have a feeling I would’ve loved this movie anyway.

It was awesome!

It is super fun, and gritty, and everything that makes Guy Ritchie movies great, with an added level of family-friendliness, believe it or not.

I went with my mother, who is a gigantic Sherlock Holmes fans, and she said it was very faithful to the original works. By taking the original short stories and novels as source and ignoring the thousands of hours of other productions, Ritchie and the writers created an honest, true Sherlock Holmes character that felt new and fresh to the world. They did a fantastic job with him, and Robert Downey Jr is great in that role. I was as skeptical as anyone else – why cast an American? – but he did a really fantastic job.

The structure of the movie is fantastic, the script is very strong and sound. And with three screenwriters (making a script based off a story with two entirely different writers), that is no easy feat. There is definitely an added benefit to working with old, beloved characters that are part of the modern mythology, but I was still really shocked when I saw the script had three different re-writers. Usually that’s a bad sign. Here it worked really well.

Guy Ritchie should definitely work on other people’s scripts more often – he brought his “cool”, fast-talking sensibility to a broader story than he usually works on. I just really can’t sum it up more than this. I loved his take on Sherlock Holmes.

For one thing, his image of historical London was real, far more realistic than previous incarnations of Sherlock Holmes I would watch on TV with my mom. It was filthy, there was dirt under everyone’s nails, people looked kind of sweaty under their elaborate layers of clothing, the sun glinted through smog. It was awesome, and I kind of want to go there and drink gin and get into fights or something. Showing Sherlock Holmes boxing for fun and getting into fights (instead of just referring to it off-screen like in many of the old movies) showed a sort of desperate, broken side of him. He was infinitely likeable, and charming, and real, and I just loved him.

I loved Watson too. Jude Law’s performance was great – though not as great as RDJ, although perhaps I need to watch it again to see if perhaps that is just Homes’ flashiness i’m talking about – but also the respect the character was given in the script, and the way he was complementary to Holmes instead of just supporting. They can only be whole together, which is one of the reasons Holmes is so upset about Watson finding love when he is so broken by love.

The male friendship (or bromance as I believe it’s called these days), between Holmes and Watson was probably my favourite part of the movie. In fact, the genuine male friendships that Ritchie shows in his films is one of the things I love most about his movies. Now of course I love it when male friendships get campy and I get slash fodder, but I love it even more when they’re true. One of the reasons why I think slash (fanworks depicted homosexual relationships between male characters) is so popular, or so easy to see in a movie or tv show, is that we as a society find it hard to show genuine platonic affection between males. In many American movies, male relationships often have to be diffused by the characters making a lot of gay jokes, for instance, being all uncomfortable about hugging after a moment when they had to hug. Or, if they are action heroes, they are firm-jawed and stoic and their friendships are more antagonistic than anything.

In Guy Ritchie films, the guys are more like real guys – often antagonistic, sure, but they also clearly care for each other, and when they do have to make physical contact they don’t have to pretend to be squicked out by it. They love each other, and because they are men they have difficulty telling each other that, and the fact that entire movie was basically Holmes begging Watson not to leave him but unable to do it verbally was just so honest and heart breaking and true.

I go on in this blog about how rarely women are represented in film, but I think it’s also true that men are rarely represented well or honestly. By some viewpoints I might be totally wrong about how Guy Ritchie handles it, but I just love the way he portrays male friendships and how honest it is. I think it’s hard to take people like Sherlock Homes or Doctor Watson and make them so real.

And speaking of women, while this movie fails the Bechdel Test, it’s definitely a big improvement when it comes to women being included in Guy Ritchie’s movies. They’re usually so minor, even if they are awesome (like the twins or the betting office worker in Snatch). RockNRolla has a female character who is actually a character who does stuff and is part of the plot, and Irene Adler is an improvement on that first step. Of course Ritchie didn’t invent Irene, and I wouldn’t really imagine that he’d be able to, but neither the writers or Ritchie reduced her the way other filmmakers could have. She is sexualized somewhat, but it was really not that bad, and Rachel McAdams gave her so much life that I never felt she was doing something just because the script said so.

In fact I don’t think I’ve seen a film this well cast since Star Trek.

I’m sure if I wanted to, I could see it again and think about it and find something to criticize, for sure. It was a little bit long-winded, and I’m sure if I really thought about the mystery part of it I could find some flaws. But the movie is just too damn fun to worry about stuff like that. I’m not big on mysteries as a rule, so for me, a good mystery film has to be all about character.

And Sherlock Holmes has got character in spades!