Word: holmeses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This movie is so busy rushing about spending money and amazing us that it has no time for emotion. Nicholas Rowe's Holmes has only seconds to weep for his dead mentor and love interest before tripping off to participate in some or other breathtaking spectacle of modern cinema.
Certainly, Speilberg's movies are exciting and amusing, and Holmes is no exception. The tricks and cutesy antics in Holmes are now archetypes, engraved in our minds from E.T. and Gremlins and irrelevant in the context of a 19th century Victorian detective drama.
That said, the movie is a model of technical perfection. Plot strands are neatly tied, Holmes and Watson are elegantly formed to fit neatly into what we already know of their future careers, and an absurdly pristine romance is thrown in to hint at Holmes' dissolute personality and later flirtation...
But Holmes is also sanitized in a way that robs this film of the deliciously dark underside that dominated Doyle's work and, in films, the wonderful Seven Percent Solution. Holmes here is an adolescent Bond armed with a quiverfull of trademark one-liners and an evanescent girlfriend to give...
Perhaps it is sour grapes to argue with the pervasive sense of fun and abandon that characterizes Holmes and has been the hallmark of Spielberg's past work. To his credit, Spielberg has not asked to be taken seriously as an artist and he delivers entertainment and good will like...