Holmes & Watson 
                                                
Director: Etan Cohen
Year: 2018
Rating: 3.0
One of my goals is to watch as many Sherlock Holmes films as I can get my hands on. But I knew this was ahead of me and I dreaded it like a visit to the dentist. Jeffrey Dahmer has more fans than this film. But in I went like a dog chasing after a red rubber ball. I had read a few reviews and they turned out to be funnier than the film. In one the critic advised moviegoers to bring a thermos of gin to drink and take a sip every time a joke fell flat - make that two thermoses. Another mentioned that more people retreated from the theater than ran away at Bull Run. Yet another cruel review told people that if they had to go to the bathroom, to just stay there. Perhaps the nastiest was saying the film should be evidence at the Hague of man's inhumanity to man. That all seems a bit much to me. I have seen less funny comedies. The Sorrow and the Pity as well as Solaris come to mind. Hardly a laugh in those.



This has as best I remember two bits that I suddenly found myself feeling mirthful. When they try and take a selfie with the Queen and almost kill her. And when Watson and the female American doctor perform an autopsy to the tune of Unchained Melody in a parody of Ghost. There may have been more but by then I was trying to force myself to go the bathroom. It is odd because in truth I find Will Ferrell very funny just standing there most of the time. Here he is liked grated cheese. He puts on an annoying accent that he thinks is funny enough to get him through the film. Perhaps they try too hard to be funny as it is one gag after another with no in between time. This is being hit by buckshot. The jokes make you wince more often than laugh. But Queen Victoria being crammed into a trunk because they thought she was dead cracked my funny bone.



There is a plot buried in there along with the corpses of dead jokes. Queen Victoria comes to Holmes and what's his name because Moriarty has threatened her life. But Holmes is sure that Moriarty has gone to America, so who is pretending to be him? Certainly, one of Holmes' greatest cases.  John C. Reilly is Watson, Ralph Fiennes is Moriarty, Steve Coogan as a one-armed tattoo artist, Hugh Laurie as Mycroft and Billy Zane in a cameo getting on the Titanic. For the historical illiterate, Queen Victoria died eleven years before the Titantic, but we needed a few more clever jokes. For a while the film is peculiar enough to stick with it but it wears out its welcome fairly quickly and by the end it feels like roadkill.



The film won a number of prestigious awards. At the Annual Raspberry Awards - Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor. Practically sweeping the awards. Not easy to do. There are rumors that people paid to have their name taken off the credits and have their faces blurred. Others fled the country and took up residence in Brazil while a few decided to change careers and go into husbandry.