With the release of the new poster image for Holmes and Watson, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, the prejudgments and the prejudices are starting to roll out, and with all the negative connotations to those words, in this case, I have to let the haters off the hook, despite the fact that I am, quite honestly, looking forward to loving this movie!
I've been a fan of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, together and separately, long enough to know that a whole lot of people just aren't going to go for any comedy they put together. Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was the gold standard for wacky comedy, and even it has haters. Holmes and Watson, I have every confidence, will probably be more of a Bewitched of Semi-Pro. The director, Etan Cohen, who directed Ferrell in Get Hard, is working with his own script for the first time, though, so who knows how that will go . . . and yet . . . .
Comedy.
Most good comedies come in around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, and when a comedy gets anywhere close to a hundred percent on that site, you know it may not be as funny as it could be. Critics like messages and relevance and the best comedy is both irrelevant and not worried about making sense, which are Will Ferrell's movie strong suits.
Yet Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlockians, tend to be about making things make sense, so this movie is going to have a hard climb with the Sherlockian fan base. (You know how "the base" can be. Chanting "LOCK THEM UP!" about Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly at a Holmes film gathering does not seem out of the realm of possibility.)
I would come out and already predict it won't have a sequel, but how many seasons has Elementary had at this point? You just never know, as it's the non-Sherlockian world that decides these things, not us. Yes, I know, some Sherlockians like Elementary, but the dead silence about it from the larger share says something. There's a kindness there that I don't think we'll be seeing applied to Holmes and Watson.
But, hey, Sherlock Gnomes made it through the big-screen mill without Sherlockian rioting and vicious web-troll attacks, so we shall see come December.
I, for one, can't wait!
I am looking forward to this movie. I am also already exhausted by the Sherlockian posse sandbagging it at every opportunity and patting themselves on the back for doing so. I wish I had a good way to get these people to step back and take a look at their behavior, and how it poisons the well of Sherlockiana far more than any given movie might. This community is lovely and kind until it is stupid and ugly, which seems to happen every couple of months because of Elementary this or Johnlock that or Sherlock Gnomes or Will Ferrell or whatever. We don't have to prove our devotion to the Canon or Jeremy Brett or Benedict Cumberbatch by mindlessly tearing everything else down. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteI suspect there is a snarky side of Sherlock Holmes that Sherlockians attempt to emulate (without actually being Sherlock Holmes, of course) that, combined with the resolute nature of the fan(atic) causes us to go on holy crusades against that which strikes us unworthy. In the end, Sherlockian culture is made up of humans, and we can get as stupid and ugly as anyone, given the right stimuli.
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