Loved the first Sherlock Holmes movie for its cheeky fun and stylish action. There were gadgets galore and plenty of suspense. And it was an engaging and fun story.
On the posters for Game of Shadows it claims to be more fun, bigger and better, or words along those lines but it isn't.
Firstly the plot is a little meandering and I'm not sure I cared enough, partly because I don't think the relationship between Holmes and Watson, which is central, is sufficiently re-established.
Robert Downey Jnr is doing the cheeky Holmes with bells on but the chimes just don't ring as joyfully as the first film. I suppose it is the Captain Jack Sparrow-syndrome. More of the same starts to wear a little thin after a while.
That isn't to say Game of Shadows isn't enjoyable. It's great to see Stephen Fry as Mycroft (and there is a lot of him to see). Jared Harris is also superb as the calmly evil Moriaty (he makes Holmes look like a bit of a buffoon at times).
It is quite fun, there is some nice tying up of plot points at the end, there are gadgets and fights and and the slow-mo action sequences but because it's all been done before it doesn't quite have the same wow-factor as the first film. (And we've since been spoilt with the BBC's rather superb Sherlock TV series.)
A pleasant enough couple of hours but I didn't walk out with a grin on my face like I did with the first film. Its going to just scrape into four star category with 60% from me.
On IMDb it's got 78% with a Metacritic score of 49% and on Rotten Tomatoes it has a critic score of 59% and 85% of visitors gave it three and a half stars or higher.
Comments