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80Downey has a winning take on Holmes: He's always on.
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75The less I thought about Sherlock Holmes, the more I liked "Sherlock Holmes." Yet another classic hero has been fed into the f/x mill, emerging as a modern superman.
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75It pleases me to report, then, that Downey brings his brain, his wit, and his gift for intelligent underplaying, even as he understands he has been hired to play Sherlock Holmes, action hero.
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75Hey, remember "fun"? If you're sick of the apocalypse and tortured anti-heroes, then you need to see Sherlock Holmes. It's a blast from start to finish.
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75This is very much a Sherlock Holmes movie for the blockbuster era.
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70Entertaining in a glossy, mindless way.
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70There's a mystery at the heart of Sherlock Holmes, and it's not the one the great master of detection has been called on to solve. It's how a film that has so many good things going for it has turned out to be solid but not spectacular.
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70There are worse things than loutish, laddish cool, and as a series of poses and stunts, Sherlock Holmes is intermittently diverting.
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70Ritchie has never worked on a scale anything approaching this before and, while some of the directorial affectations are distracting, he keeps the action humming.
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70The movie as a whole is clever, and conspicuously overwrought. But Mr. Downey's performance is elegantly wrought; he's as quick-witted as his legendary character, and blithely funny in the lovers' spats-all right, the mystery-lovers' spats-that Holmes keeps having with Jude Law's witty Dr. Watson.
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70Challenged by Downey's energy, Jude Law, who often seems aimless in his movies, comes fully up to speed. He's virile and quick-witted, and his Watson, if not Holmes's equal in brainpower, comes close to him in daring. Their repartee evokes the banter of lovers in a screwball comedy; they flirt outrageously but chastely.
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67Here's hoping that younger members of the audience will seek out Conan Doyle's original stories to further explore Holmes' official amanuensis, Dr. John Watson, whose brilliant case studies regarding his friend, roommate, and fellow rationalist are the stuff dreams are made of.
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67Sherlock Holmes is an odd amalgam, a top-heavy light entertainment that keeps throwing things at you and doesn't seem too concerned with whether they stick.
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63Sherlock Holmes has been reimagined with fighting skills as potent as his intellectual acumen.
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63The reason Sherlock Holmes fails at least as often as it succeeds is because more effort and attention was lavished upon the concept than upon the script. Given a worthy story, Downey's Holmes might have been memorable. Here, he's an interesting character in search of a worthwhile story.
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63Ritchie and company spend too much time being cute and not enough time being clever, resulting in a one-dimensional comic-book version of Doyle's detectives.
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63The result is only half as hip as hoped. Yes, this Holmes is leaner and meaner, and Watson (Jude Law) is nearly his equal. But there's still something fussy about the result, as if bobbies had broken up the party at 11:59.
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60In short, Ritchie's come up with precisely what you'd expect of him - a pumped-up, anachronistically modern Sherlock Holmes designed for the ADD crowd. Expect a sequel. Or six.
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60A fun, action-packed reintroduction to Conan Doyle's classic characters. Part Two should provide more in the way of scope.
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60By now we've seen so many good, bad, and indifferent Sherlocks that it's almost a relief to get something different, however wrongheaded. And there's no such thing as too much Downey.
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50Ritchie is all about the whooshing and headbanging, leaving no space between Holmes' words to savor their meaning. Downey is irresistible. The movie, not so much.
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50Not even Sherlock Holmes could make much sense out of the overplotted, murky mess that is "Sherlock Holmes," although Arthur Conan Doyle's legendarily brainy detective would probably never buy a ticket to a movie as elephant-footed as this one.
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50With a clamorous soundtrack and a whirl of elaborate chases and busily choreographed fight scenes, this is Sherlock Holmes with Attention Deficit Disorder.
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50Guy Ritchie is the worst screenwriter in the world, but, to be fair, he is not the worst director. He is only the worst director of the people who actually get to make movies.
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50Guy Ritchie's Holmes reboot feels both too complicated and too elementary, dear Watson.
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50Despite some arresting visual flourishes and Downey's inherent likeability, it's nearly incoherent both as cinema and as story. No, this isn't your grandfather's or your father's Sherlock Holmes, but if theirs featured Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett in the lead, it was better by miles.
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50As over-emphatic as one might expect from the ham-fisted Guy Ritchie, this resurrection of the world's most famous detective is a dank, noisy affair.
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42This is certainly the grubbiest Holmes in movie history.
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40Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.
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40This is the ultimate sin of the film, generically helmed by lad-auteur Guy Ritchie: Logic seems to be thrown out the window in order to make room for clashes on a partially completed Tower Bridge. It's way too elementary.
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38It's a serious drag to see how Ritchie has turned Holmes and Dr. Watson into a couple of garden-variety thugs.
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38Sherlock Holmes dumbs down a century-old synonym for intelligence with S&M gags, witless sarcasm, murky bombast and twirling action-hero moves that belong in a ninja flick.
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38This "Holmes" is just about as silly as it awesome. At times, Ritchie and company try so hard to make sure this isn't your father's "Sherlock Holmes" that it comes across as, well, cartoonish.
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30The very idea of handing him over to professional lad Guy Ritchie (who directed Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), to be played as a punch-throwing quipster by Robert Downey Jr., is so profoundly stupid one can only step back in dismay.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 129 out of 169
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Mixed: 21 out of 169
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Negative: 19 out of 169
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8Sherlock Holmes was greatly acted, suspenseful picture with a great impersonation of Holmes. Robert Downey Jr. deserved best actor nomination.