Holmes & Watson (Review)
Holmes & Watson Proves Not Every Quirky Idea is a Good One.
Will Farrell and John C. Reilly are probably one of the most consistently funny comedy duos working in movies today. They’ve had success in films like Step Brothers and Talladega Nights, so it’s a little weird that Holmes & Watson is so painfully unfunny. Not only that, but it’s an absolute catastrophe of a film that borders on cringeworthy more often than not. What should have been a fun end of the year movie for all to enjoy only proves that Hollywood will make anything these days.
By now everyone probably knows the tale of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant detective who solves impossible crimes with the help of his trusty sidekick, Doctor John Watson. It’s a concept that’s been done over and over again, this time though it gets a “comedic” makeover with Farrell and Reilly as the duo. It seems like a potential recipe for a laugh out loud comedy that would be the perfect film to wrap up 2018. So, where did everything go so wrong with Homes & Watson? Well, when the recipe looks good, I tend to blame the chef when the meal is inedible.
At the helm of Homes & Watson is Etan Coen (definitely not to be mistaken for Ethan Coen, a good filmmaker) who wrote and directed the film. In all fairness, he’s done good work in the past writing movies like Tropic Thunder, but his approach as a director seems to be letting the actors do their thing and hoping for the best. However, the result of that in Holmes & Watson is basically a bunch of comedic games of chicken where neither Ferrell or Reilly want to blink first and end up just beating the gags into the ground. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a certain chemistry that the two share together on screen, but the running jokes in the movie all end up landing flat. Of course, I won’t go so far as to say I didn’t laugh once in Holmes & Watson, but my two or three slight chuckles (and I do mean chuckles) don’t warrant the price of admission or make up for my wasted time.
While Ferrell has been relatively absent from theaters this year, Reilly has had a pretty good one with films like The Sisters Brothers and Ralph Breaks the Internet. The two try their best to fall right back into the same groove they had in their previous films, but the piss poor British accents and groan-worthy script seriously undermind their ability to hit their comedic stride. It certainly doesn’t help that the film uses the two female leads, Lauren Lapkus and Rebecca Hall, literally only serve as window dressing in order to make sexist jokes that are meant to prove what buffoons the two men are. Things wear especially thin with Lapkus character who plays Holmes love interest, a woman raised by feral cats with the mind of a 4-year-old. Sounds like quite a funny side character, but not necessarily satisfying recurring character that audiences are subjected to repeatedly throughout the film. Then again, this is exactly the type of humor seen repeatedly in Holmes & Watson.
I’m as much a fan of stupid comedies as the next guy. Hell, half the reason Stars & Popcorn exists is to recognize movies that might not be “good” but are fun and enjoyable. However, when stacked up against other 2018 comedies like Blockers, Game Night and even Tag, Homes & Watson is hot garbage. The film is so juvenile it borders on infantile. Coen’s pacing completely disrupts any flow that the two leads try to get into and even the jokes that could possibly land are, strangely enough, never taken as far as they could go. The end result is a movie that seems so desperate to be funny that it comes across as pathetic instead, and I’m not one to laugh at the pathetic.
Holmes & Watson comes dangerously close to earning a spot among the 10 worst movies of 2018. However, most of the films on that list managed to raise legitimate feelings of anger in me, while this film just rouses pity. I feel bad for those that have their names attached to Homes & Watson. Ferrell and Reilly have to live with the embarrassment of this film long after I’ve forgotten that I wasted an hour and a half on it. No, I didn’t hate Holmes & Watson because that would mean that I actually cared about it. Instead, it’s just another film that left me feeling absolutely nothing by the time the credits rolled.
