Holmes & Watson (2018) – Or, Time for Will Ferrell to Do Something Different

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Tags

Comedy, Dr Watson, Etan Cohen, John C. Reilly, Moriarty, Parody, Queen Victoria, Rebecca Hall, Review, Sherlock Holmes, Will Ferrell

D: Etan Cohen / 90m

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Rebecca Hall, Kelly Macdonald, Lauren Lipkus, Rob Brydon, Pam Ferris, Steve Coogan, Hugh Laurie, Ralph Fiennes

A score of 3.9 on IMDb. A score of 25 on Metacritic. A 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. All beg the question: is Holmes & Watson really that bad? The answer is unequivocal: yes, it is.

It’s not just bad, it’s abysmal. It’s sluggish, dull, uninspired, monotonous, vapid, unimaginative, feeble, pointless, moronic, inane, stupid, tedious, stale, lacklustre, incompetent, and worst of all for a supposed comedy, almost entirely laugh free. It’s a clear contender for worst movie of the year, something of a feat when 2018 has already given us the likes of Lake Placid: Legacy, The Nun, Mile 22, Supercon, and Proud Mary. This is a movie that is so awful you have to wonder if anyone was paying attention while they were making it, a piece of dreadful nonsense about a plot to kill Queen Victoria (Ferris) by Professor Moriarty (Fiennes) that is so lazy its climax takes place on RMS Titanic (Victoria was long dead by the time it launched in 1912). Writer/director Cohen brings absolutely nothing new to the idea of a Sherlock Holmes parody, and wastes the time and efforts of his very talented cast. A perfect example of Cohen’s approach is the moment when Holmes smears Watson in horse shit; a better metaphor for the movie as a whole couldn’t be more fitting.

But more concerning perhaps than all of this is the performance of Will Ferrell. Someone really needs to take him to one side and tell him that his manic style of comic acting is wearing perilously thin these days. Shouting isn’t inherently funny, but Ferrell does this a lot, and when he isn’t shouting, he’s behaving in such an arch, mannered fashion that he just looks and sounds like he’s trying too hard, as if someone had told him that if he didn’t behave that way then the material – and his performance – wouldn’t be as effective. As a result, it’s hard to tell if Ferrell is afraid to try something different, or he’s just being lazy. Either way, he’s the movie’s weakest link, and he drags it down every time he opens his mouth or offers us another of his “hilarious” facial expressions (see above). Maybe it’s time for Ferrell to broaden his horizons and make more serious fare, and remind audiences that beneath his default man-child persona, there’s an actor with a greater range than portrayals such as Chazz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory (2007) and James in Get Hard (2015) would seem to indicate. It’s not as if he hasn’t proved this already, with Stranger Than Fiction (2006) and Everything Must Go (2010), movies that showed he could do subtle and restrained, and find the truth in a character, rather than their inner idiot.

In the meantime we’re stuck with Holmes & Watson, a movie that sucks hard at the teat of comedy and comes away with the merest of dribbles to sustain its inept storyline, dire dialogue, and crass characterisations (you really have to feel for the likes of Fiennes and Hall, forced to standby as their credibility as serious actors is stripped from them with each passing moment they’re on screen). Cohen – whose first outing as a writer/director was the less than appropriately titled short, My Wife Is Retarded (2007) – displays a singular lack of ability behind the camera, cluttering up the frame, placing the camera where it has the least impact, and utilising close ups for dramatic purposes that only he can explain. Scenes connect haphazardly and awkwardly with each other, and Holmes’ leaps of intuition make about as much sense as why this farrago was made in the first place. This is the second movie of 2018 to feature John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan in its cast, and it’s instructive that this is markedly inferior to their other outing, the sublime Stan & Ollie. Now that really is a funny movie (take note, Will Ferrell).

Rating: 3/10 – saved from a 2/10 rating by virtue of its production design alone, Holmes & Watson is a terrible, dispiriting way to see out the year, and a firm reminder that Ferrell’s “schtick” is well past its sell-by date; when a “comedy” with such a talented cast is released straight to cinemas without the benefit of critics’ screenings beforehand then the warning signs couldn’t be more obvious, and the timing of its release near Xmas is entirely apt: it’s an enormous turkey.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

13 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Burr Steers, Drama, Elizabeth Bennet, Horror, Jane Austen, Lena Headey, Lily James, Literary adaptation, Mr. Darcy, Parody, Regency England, Review, Sam Riley, Seth Grahame-Smith, Thriller, Zombies

D: Burr Steers / 102m

Cast: Lily James, Sam Riley, Matt Smith, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote, Douglas Booth, Lena Headey, Sally Phillips, Charles Dance, Ellie Bamber, Millie Brady, Suki Waterhouse

From the 1814 Alternate Universe Almanac, 21 January:

Revealed to a waiting world with all the fanfare that the firm of Butan, McKittrick, Oliver, Portman, Savitch, Shearmur & Thompson can muster, these kindly souls have enjoined us to a world that has no equal or predecessor in the annals of the flickering image. Miss Jane Austen’s latest novel, published to great acclaim last year, has been fashioned into a drab, humourless affair that strains the credulity of every right-thinking person in the land, and which purports to imagine an England overrun by an army of the dead.

Preposterous you may say, and this author would heartily agree with you. Concocted with a clear disdain for the exquisite talent of Miss Austen, Mr. Burr Steers and Mr. Seth Grahame-Smith – both Americans, no doubt – have taken her sterling work and made a mockery of its literary merits by inserting strange creatures that resemble vampires, but with the exception that they seek flesh to eat rather than blood to drink. It is not uncommon to find examples of this kind of unabashed traducery made as low entertainment for the masses, but it is for the more discerning viewer of these “tragedies” to be of one voice with his equally appalled brethren and shout loudly, “No more! No more repellent travesties created to provide succour for the poor in spirit and the easily tempted! No more!”

A crueller distraction could no more be found than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The subtlety of Miss Austen’s prose is retained for the most part, but be not gladdened by this admission, for it is used in such a paltry way that readers familiar with Miss Austen’s work will be distraught at the way in which emphasis is abandoned in favour of recitation, and her characters speak as if they had not the wit to understand their own utterances. It is a folly to assume that Mr. Steers and Mr. Grahame-Smith have generated this debacle with any concern for the respect Miss Austen’s work has accrued since her debut some two years ago. While it can be said that the settings they have chosen give some degree of pleasure to the eye, as do the ladies chosen to portray the Bennet sisters, it is nevertheless an endeavour that lacks finesse, and proves of little consequence once experienced from beginning to end.

Be warned: the inclusion of “zombies” marks a low point in our nation’s proud literary and (short-lived) zoetropic history. What possible good can come of this exhibition’s existence it’s doubtful anyone will be able to determine, and this august periodical can see no reason for its existence beyond a scurrilous and repugnant attempt to separate the hoi polloi from what little earnings they make – earnings that would no doubt be put to better use in the purchase of potatoes for the nurturing of their families. For make no mistake, here is no nurturing of the mind or the finer senses to be gained from viewing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It is an ill-conceived distraction, filled with moments that are both violent and reprehensible, and which paint such a dismal alternative to the beauteous world we live in that one must question the motives of the men and women who have found this a suitable piece to put before the public.

There can be no doubt that the assembly called upon to inhabit the various roles Miss Austen went to great pains to construct – and with such great artistry – have little to offer in terms of imagination or grace. Special mention must go to the esteemed Mr. Dance, an actor of such renown that his presence here is difficult to fathom, surrounded as he is by artists who lack the graces God gave them to fully articulate the feelings and emotions that occupy our hearts and minds on each and every blessed day of our existence. That Miss Austen wrote of romantic involvement with such subtlety and perspicacity appears to have been put aside in favour of feeble declarations of ardour, declarations that carry the barest weight of conviction.

In conclusion, the efforts of Mr. Steers and Mr. Grahame-Smith have proved to be of such a disservice to those of us who champion the potential of the zoetropic arts that we would be forever indebted to them if they refrained from making any further assaults on our senses. Let us say again: “No more!”

Rating: 3/10 – a dire movie that plods along in search of a reason to exist (like its titular creatures perhaps), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sounds like a great twist on an old classic, but in truth is uncomfortable to watch as a period piece, and as a horror movie; when the zombies have more personality – and evoke more sympathy – than your main characters, then you have a movie that’s in trouble in more ways than one, and this movie courts trouble like an aging Lothario looking to impress one young woman too many.