Holmes & Watson (2018)

Director: Etan Cohen

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Rebecca Hall, Ralph Fiennes

Have I Seen it Before: No. It feels like a weird time. I live in an age when it takes something to get me out to the theater (indeed, I have only been once since I was vaccinated in April). In the before times, I’d go see anything, and I didn’t even need a Moviepass to convince me. Despite enjoying Ferrell and Reilly, and being—if a bit of neophyte—a Holmesian at heart, this one missed me.

The word of mouth was truly that toxic. 

Did I Like It: The notion of a comedy Sherlock Holmes film is not a bad one. Without a Clue (1988) performed that beyond a doubt. Even this film, on spec, wasn’t a terrible idea for the many, many years it languished in development hell. Originally, it would have had Ferrell as Watson and Sacha Baron Cohen as Holmes. That’s actually pretty great casting. That film could have turned out fine, if the anarchic spirit of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) would have brought to its full potential.

That is not the cast we got. Nor is it the film we got.

Reilly can cut the right sort of Nigel Bruce-esque buffoon that is the instinct of many who approach Baker Street, but Ferrell, on spec, isn’t in the slightest bit Holmes. His whole comedic personae is based on the screaming, overconfident idiot. Holmes can be an idiot, but he needs to always look like he’s trying to figure things out. Baron Cohen could have done that in his sleep.

It might feel reductive to judge what is clearly meant to be a comedy by “how many times I laughed,” but when I know it was no more than twice, with one of them being in the title card, that’s not a great jumping off point for discussing the film.

Also, that Billy Zane cameo was such a drag, and stuck out like such a sore thumb, I couldn’t even recommend the film as the kind of thing you could benignly play in the background and ignore.

It is a failure. Go watch Without a Clue, which I might very well do now that I’ve thought about it far more than the film in question here.

Walk Hard (2007)

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Tim Meadows, Kristen Wiig

Have I Seen it Before: Yep. Somehow, I once had the DVD on my shelf, but I got rid of it at some point, and I can’t quite account for it.

Did I Like It: I really did, for the most part! I liked it so much that I was mystified that the movie had so conclusively dropped off my radar in the years since its release. I even bought tracks of the soundtrack off of iTunes with some long-since abandoned, a fact that I only realized when I self consciously started singing along with some of the songs.

The film itself is in the best tradition of spoofs like Airplane (1980) and The Naked Gun (1988), which is also pretty surprising. For one thing, the Apatow pedigree would be a more realistic comedy like The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Knocked Up (2007). For another, By the time this film has been released, I had mostly written off the joke as machine gun spoofs, largely because the experiment that was the Scary Movie franchise got out of the lab and flooded us with unwatchable dreck.

As much as the film might entertain, especially in its opening minutes when the tragedy of Cox’s childhood (and the trappings of similar biopics) is writ large, the film does run a little bit out of gas. Call me a sucker for absurdism but redeeming Cox and grounding him back in reality saps the film of its best laughs. A little bit of that manic energy remains until the end, but you can’t quite measure up to a game of chicken with a tractor and a bull.

But that the music in the film works on its own grounds is what makes it a treat to revisit after all this time. Just as soon as the runtime ended on Netflix, I put the soundtrack back on my Apple Music list. Welcome back, Dewey. It’s been a while.

Ralph Breaks The Internet (2018)

Director: Rich Moore, Phil Johnston

Cast: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Gal Gadot, Taraji P. Henson

Have I Seen it Before: It definitely represents a trend in animated sequels, but no, I missed it in the theaters.

Did I Like It: Look…

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the sequel to Wreck it Ralph (2012). The humor is on-point, if—at times—a little like grabbing for low-hanging fruit when it comes to the mercurial nature of the internet. The action set pieces and other animation are clever, as are the sequences involving the bevy of Disney Princesses…

And that might be part of the problem. Far be it for me to drag someone for thinking too much and feeling too little in the context of a story, but I think lthe problem here is that the original had such a perfectly constructed emotional through-line for its main character. In the original film, Ralph (Reilly) must come to accept who he is if he is to ever hope to be the person—and have the life—he wants.

That’s powerful stuff for any movie, much less one aimed at children that—when you scratch away enough layers—is ultimately an exercise in advanced brand synergy. Here, the closest we get to an emotional arc is the need for Ralph to be a more supportive friend. It’s along the same lines of what happened in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019), where the incisive deconstruction of the nature of creativity is sidelined by a message for kids to be nicer to their siblings. It’s a fine ideal, and I suppose it may be unfair for every movie in a franchise to try to re-wrinkle my brain, but I can’t not remark on the fact that—while not embarrassing and still quite entertaining—things just aren’t the same any more.

However, if the film’s loftier ideas can somehow be incepted into a generation of children through an otherwise entertaining picture, then that might actually have a positive impact on human society, so who am I to really judge? Maybe it’s far better than I’m giving it credit.

Step Brothers (2008)

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes

Did I Like It: Fuck it, yes I did. Don’t @ me.

People have been down on Will Ferrell forever. His humor is just yelling, they’d say. It’s just men acting like children with nothing more to show for itself, they’d groan. The only good movie Ferrell has ever made is Stranger Than Fiction (2006)*.

Well, they’re full of donkey shit.

Maybe this movie has me riled up 

There will come a time when I will somehow be compelled to watch Holmes & Watson (2018). It’s probably going to be when it shows up on some service I’ve already paid for. I also imagine that I’m going to hate it. That’s because the particular kind of party that Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly is over. But here, before McKay made the transition to semi-serious political satirist, the “let the camera run” semi-improv movie is still a delight. I’m laughing fairly regularly, and it isn’t like they are promising anything else.

Or, at least, it’s a delight for a little bit. This free association in this film isn’t really done anymore, and this might be the turning point of diminishing returns. Somewhere around the time Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly) decide their best friends that I’m not sure the film even attempts any kind of believability. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the film isn’t interested in believability in the early goings, but the strange affectations of the characters keep things going for the first act. It’s a ten-to-one SNL sketch extended to 98 minutes. Kind of like how I’ve tried to extend the word count of this review to a reasonable length.

Maybe I’m not the same arrested adolescent that really liked these movies. That’s a pretty big maybe.

*That one is mostly my wife. For the record, she is not full of any type of shit up to and including donkey.