BEFORE: After this, I'm two films from the end of the year - so there's no way I'm changing up my chain now, I'm on this track to a Christmas film and even though other linking opportunities have presented themselves, I'm staying the course. This is where I planned in July to be right now, and I'm going to see it through. Three days to Christmas, and two more films to get my perfect year.
John C. Reilly carries over from "Ralph Breaks the Internet", and so does one actress who voiced one of the Disney princesses. Reilly, of course, is already scheduled to make my year-end countdown because I already did a chain of four or five films with him, and I think she's also going to be a late addition to that list, because this marks her third appearance for the year.
THE PLOT: A humorous take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic mysteries featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
AFTER: This is just the way life goes sometimes - one day you're watching the big blockbuster "Star Wars" movie, and just two days later, it's a throwaway Will Ferrell comedy that just isn't funny (for the most part...). I often point out a big disparity with food, one day I find myself eating a spectacular meal at a fancy restaurant, and the next day for lunch, it's canned pasta. (I do like the Chef Boy-ar-Dee lasagna, though, which offends my wife's Italian heritage.). Friday night I was enjoying a wonderful meal of braised short ribs at a diner in Queens, and the next day for lunch, I was making sandwiches with some leftover Treet (that's the spam-like luncheon loaf stuff that's not even as good as spam, God help me...)
This film is a lot like Treet - it's not even up to SPAM's level. Oh, sure, you could do worse for lunch, you could accidentally some rancid meat or get food poisoning from some bad potato salad, there's nothing about Treet that will harm you or kill you, you just might not light the taste or the texture. But if you've had fried bologna, and enjoyed that, maybe it's right up your alley. (I put the slices of Treet on some sliced croissants my wife had baked, added some American cheese and honey mustard, and it wasn't too bad. But then, I like to eat head cheese and other German cold cuts - leberkäse has a similar bologna-like texture.
And please note, there was the opportunity for a solid parody of the "Sherlock Holmes" novels, or even of the "Sherlock Holmes" films that starred Robert Downey Jr. - those things took themselves so damned seriously, were so pretentious that there's a lot to make fun of there. Yeah, but this is not that parody, because it just devolves into a lot of dick jokes and vomit gags, making "Talladega Nights" look like a comedy masterpiece by comparison. Ferrell and Reilly, I thought you guys were better than this, and I'm very disappointed to learn that I was wrong.
Let's start with the main concept - that maybe Sherlock Holmes isn't as smart as everyone thinks he is. Again, there's the opportunity for some comedy there, Sherlock Holmes as a moron has some potential. But this film puts that out there, and then just can't stick with it - because let's face it, how do you write that? So then it has to backtrack and say, "Wait, he's NOT an idiot, he was right all along...", and then they have to bend the plot over backwards and sideways to ensure that that's the case. So he's smart, then he's stupid, then he's smart again, only he still finds ways to act stupid, so now I don't know which end is up. Inconsistency will KILL a film for me - PICK A FREAKIN' LANE!
There's the germ of a good idea, which is the only reason that I'm giving this film any points at all. First there's the suggestion that maybe Watson is some kind of criminal mastermind, hiding in plain sight, gathering intel on Holmes from within the organization, feeding information to Moriarty, or perhaps even Moriarty himself. God, I'd love to read a book or see a film that had that level of twist to it. But it's a dodge here, Holmes is once again mistaken (because this happens during one of the segments of the film where he's temporarily stupid again, for no reason). There is an agent close to Holmes working against him, and this might have also been a great reveal, except it's too little, too late, and then it sort of pales by comparison to the Watson idea.
There are manufactured love interests for both Holmes and Watson, and too much emphasis is placed on Holmes not understanding that Watson's girlfriend can be a doctor - OK, it's a little funny to make fun of how sexist the world used to be, but there still should be no place for sexism in a modern comedy. Holmes' girlfriend is so dumb that she can't even speak, or so we're led to believe, so then why is he, a supposedly smart man, attracted to her? And she was raised by feral cats? It's another long joke with no real payoff, and there are dozens of them here.
The whole segment where Holmes and Watson think that they've accidentally killed the Queen - it comes out of nowhere, it goes on way too long, and again, there's no payoff. It just sort of...stops, like the worst of Ferrell's SNL sketches. PLUS it's not funny, not one bit of it. Why, why, why?
The best thing I can say about this is that it was nice to see Coogan and Brydon working together again, and playing roles, not just sitting in a restaurant it Italy trying to figure out who can do a better Michael Caine impression. Though if they made another sequel to "The Trip" I'll probably watch that one, too...
The other part I liked was the depiction of Holmes as a child, when after being bullied by his classmates, he uses his deductive reasoning powers to bust them all for their various sins and gets them all expelled. Being the only student at school, he then gets full attention from all of the teachers and this explains his superior intelligence. This also doesn't make too much sense, because any proper prep school would then find other students to fill its ranks, but it's a neat little twist in a Holmes origin story. This is the only other part of the story that needed to be in a much better movie.
NITPICK POINT: The joke about characters sailing on the Titanic just plain doesn't work, because the "Sherlock Holmes" stories are set in the Victorian era, the late 1800's, and we ALL know what year the Titanic sailed, right? Even in a nonsense comedy, the dates need to line up if the gags are going to work. Same goes for listening to "Unchained Melody" on a victrola - this isn't "Airplane!".
Also starring Will Ferrell (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Ralph Fiennes (ditto), Rebecca Hall (last seen in "The Dinner"), Rob Brydon (last heard in "Early Man"), Kelly Macdonald (also carrying over from "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Steve Coogan (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Pam Ferris (last seen in "Matilda"), Hugh Laurie (last seen in "101 Dalmatians"), Bella Ramsey, Scarlet Grace, Noah Jupe (last seen in "A Quiet Place"), Braun Strowman, Hector Bateman-Harden, Codie-Lei Eastick, with cameos from Billy Zane (last seen in "Dead Calm"), Michael Buffer (last seen in "Creed II").
RATING: 3 out of 10 bites of an onion
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