In Defense of Will Ferrell's Sherlock Holmes

 Catching up on some television I missed this week, with a changing of the guard between seasons finished and seasons started, and found my way back to The Hawk on Netflix, a comedy about a has-been pro golfer intent on making a comeback. It starred Will Ferrell, playing a typical Will Ferrell character, and brought back to mind his Sherlock Holmes from the movie Holmes & Watson.

A typical Will Ferrell character is a prideful idiot, the sort who thinks he's the best at whatever he does, being it golf, basketball, TV anchoring, Eurovision Song Contest, you name it. And did Sherlock Holmes think he was the best at what he did?

Yes, he did. It's Canon. Score one point for Mr. Ferrell.

And somehow, yes, somehow, those prideful idiots succeed by the end of the movie. And did Sherlock Holmes succeed at the end of a case?

Well, mostly.

And a typical Will Ferrell character has enormous weaknesses. Bad habits, poor social graces . . . oh, wait, doesn't Sherlock Holmes have those same traits?

So why is it that a few Sherlockians so disdain a Will Ferrell Sherlock Holmes whilst celebrating Michael Caine's idiot Holmes in Without A Clue? Why do they decry Ferrell as an American miscasting mistake whilst accepting two movies from Robert Downey Jr., who doesn't even hit the Holmes height requirement like Will Ferrell.

Well, I could say some fans might take their fandom a little too seriously to have some fun with Holmes & Watson. Or I could say some folks have that Saturday Night Live issue, where they bonded with one season's cast in their childhood and won't accept the comic stylings of any other. Or, I could just say, well, it's okay if they don't get it, because sometimes, life just takes you on a sub-optimal path. But all of those would be ad hominum arguments, the last resort of the desperate debater that we see so often in the modern political arenas. And Holmes & Watson doesn't need that. It's got John C. Reilly. It's got Kelly Macdonald. Rebecca Hall. Hugh Laurie. Ralph Fiennes. Lauren Lapkus. Steve Coogan. Rob Brydon. And Queen freakin' Victoria, who they say was played by someone called Pam Ferris, but that sure looked like Queen Victoria to me. That's a cast!

The theme song to Netflix's The Hawk is lyrically brief: "They call him the Hawk. He's a golfer. The greatest golfer in the world."

Can you hear an echo of Sherlock Holmes in those words? I can. But maybe that's because I relate to those characters the same way I've always related to Sherlock Holmes. Prideful, socially inept, but somehow sure it's all going to work out in the end. And maybe just self-aware enough to connect to just being an idiot sometimes. And like the much lauded The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which shares a few things with Holmes & Watson, maybe that's what makes it a favorite of mine.

Your mileage may vary, so enjoy whatever movie you're driving for whatever your favorites are. But Holmes & Watson is not a movie to be so easily dismissed.