*Originally written January 1st, 2019*
Holmes and Watson is everything I expected from the trailers, it's 90 minutes of brainless, lazy jokes and crude attempts at humour. A film so pathetic and lazy that it's managed to make the headlines because of the amount of walkouts the film had seen over its opening weekend. It really is that bad.
The idea of making a spoof of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films feels outdated considering those films were a decade ago. Will Ferrell and John C Reilly are two actors I really like when they have a good creative team behind them. I wasn't a huge fan of Step Brothers, but this makes Step Brothers and Talladega Nights seem like masterful pieces of comedy genius in comparison.
There's just so little to talk about here, it's more interesting to talk about the news surrounding the film. Like the fact even Netflix turned this down after terrible test screenings. Netflix turned this down, the same company that release dozens of lazy and awful films every few months. Even they wouldn't touch this.
Part of me does have a soft spot for really dumb comedies. I grew up watching the Ali G movie a lot and even the Daddy's Home films I adore, and if you want some insane genius, then John C Reilly's music biopic spoof Walk Hard is a work of art. But everything in this proved to be too much for me, aside from one moment in the opening of scene of Holmes tending a giant marrow he's growing and referring to it as a "Dirty bitch", I didn't laugh once, although the Victorian era equivalent of drunk texting was an fun idea, it was just executed horribly.
Then there's the horrifically lame jokes aiming at Trump and contemporary issues brought up in a Victorian setting. It's brutal, there's selfie sticks, cringey hip-hop music and awfully on the nose visual gangs like Holmes wearing a red hat that says "Make England great again". Fuck my life.
What's most shocking about this mess is how it managed to attract this many talented cast members. It's a disaster almost on the scale of Movie 43. outside of Ferrell and Reilly we have Kelly McDonald, Ralph Fiennes, Rebecca Hall, Steve Coogan and Hugh Laurie. Was this just an easy paycheck for them, or did they actually think what they were in was funny? Based on their careers, I can only fathom they were in it for the cash grab.
Holmes and Watson is truly awful. One of the worst films of the year, a lazy and cynical attempt at comedy that isn't even worthy of being a Netflix original. Pathetic.
2/10 Dans
Holmes and Watson is out now in cinemas in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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