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Friday, April 05, 2019

'Holmes & Watson' Is Stupidly Unfunny

Many people consider Holmes & Watson as the worst major film of 2018.  But, despite being aware of this, I still decided to watch it because: a.) I’ve been a die-hard fan of the source material for most of my life, and as a consequence of that fandom, I’m usually compelled to check out as many adaptations and media inspired by it as I can – even the bad ones; and b.) I was genuinely curious if it was indeed worse than A Wrinkle in Time, the most terrible film I saw last year.

Holmes & Watson caricatures the iconic duo of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, played respectively by the reuniting Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.  The story follows the mystery solvers as they work against the clock to prevent the murder of Queen Victoria (Pam Ferris), a plot put into motion by Prof. Moriarty (Ralph Fiennes) or a copycat.

From its opening minutes, I immediately recognized that it was devoid of cleverness or substantial entertainment value.  It only got worse and worse as it progressed.
As a parody, it’s generally unfunny.  There’s a sense that it’s trying to spoof Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies.  If so, it has come several years too late in exploiting any form of recognition.  Heck, as they are, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies are actually much funnier!

Its humor relies too much on the tired trope of an element of modern culture being mimicked in the context of an old-fashioned period setting.   The jokes are absolute crap.  Ironically, the one joke that did manage to make me genuinely laugh aloud involves crap (i.e. when Holmes gave Watson a disguise).  It also has a couple of surprising cameos, but none of them really improve the sense of amusement – if there’s any to begin with.

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly had been an effective comedic duo in their past film collaborations.  Unfortunately, they were unable to replicate the same success this time around.  They couldn’t generate a chemistry that might have saved a thoroughly bland, stupid script.
Yeah, Holmes & Watson is godawful.  It’s still better than A Wrinkle in Time though.

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