I love Sherlock Holmes. Ever since gingerly taking down my Grandad’s complete Sherlock Holmes from his shelf and leafing through, transfixed by Sidney Paget‘s glorious etched illustrations and the world they evoked.
For some reason, he’s never really worked on the screen for me. Not even the supposedly definitive Jeremy Brett version flicked my switches. I can’t quite put my finger on why either as I normally dig screen versions of characters from books. Maybe it’s just because you can imagine humour in Holmes’ voice when he’s speaking from the page and the actors never quite hit that note. The screen Holmes is always just one serious motherfucker.
Anyway, the thought of a Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes curdled my blood when I first heard about it – and the trailers have done nothing to assuage my fears about what he’d do. Think slo-mo, explosions, CGI and fist fights. Devin Fareci on Chud called this “the Jackass version of Holmes” and it looks like a good call.
Despite that, I think I’d quite like to see the damn thing. As I’ve never particularly got on with the reverential, serious small screen Holmes I think something that just rips the rule book up and presents Holmes in a new, fun light might just work. I can’t believe I just typed that.
On the plus side: Robert Downey Jr.