The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Director: Sidney Lanfield

Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Richard Greene, Wendy Barrie

Have I Seen It Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: I keep thinking that certain types of stories, certain types of characters, are better suited to certain formats, with a few outlying exceptions. Batman works best in a comic book. Star Trek works best in hour-long television. Star Wars works best in rare, event movies.

Is it possible that Sherlock Holmes just works best in novels and short fiction?

Maybe.

Things are a little light here, and that’s to be expected from the studio system trying to jam a entire book into 80 minutes. Even a bad movie from 1939 has the charm of flickering in black and white and generally seeming as if it sprung whole-cloth from an untroubled* era.

Rathbone and Bruce seem tentative in their roles, but I wonder if I simply never thought much of the pair as Holmes and Watson, even if so many performers who followed are simply doing impressions of them.

The problem might be that one of the things filtered out of these Doyle adaptations is Holmes’ eccentricities. Subsequent pastiches and re-workings make Holmes to be brilliant, but erratic. Here, Holmes is merely a Smart Guy, and Watson—the only one with any actual training—is a bumbling fool.

Maybe they get better in the roles, but considering they had to grind out two Holmes pictures a year for the next seven years, I can’t imagine the assembly line mentality recommends the subsequent films any more than this first effort. The truth might be that those among you who might want to indulge in a does of classic Holmes should eschew Turner Classic Movies** in favor of the Doyle canon.

Or opt for some of the Nicholas Meyer books. There, now I’m back to my good old self.

*But, ultimately, entirely troubled.

**Gods of Cinema, what am I saying?!

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.

Mr. Holmes (2015)

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It’s been a sealed Blu Ray sitting on my shelf for years. As it stood, I made a conscious decision to avoid any and all Holmes pastiches, as I was busy making my own. Now, with that project nearly a year behind me, and God only knows when I will break down and return to it in some fashion, I’ve taken the opportunity to dip my toe back in the pool.

Did I Like It: Really, quite a bit. The character of Holmes is almost universally depicted as being a refined alloy of logic and ability. Even Doyle only occasionally made his detective human. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) gives him some foibles, but this is the first (and last, given his age) we see the man as someone with regret and feeling for his fellow human beings. 

McKellan cuts a believable figure at various stages of Holmes as an older man. Surely some of it is aided by makeup, but it is subtle work and I believe the man in his seventies is a distinctly different figure than what he is like at his nineties. A lot of it is in the performance. He is spry and vital in the film’s flashbacks, and withered and struggling during the main storyline. It’s an impressive performance. Eagle-eyed fans of the Sherlockana will pick up on Nicholas Rowe—of Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) fame—as Holmes in the movie old Sherlock takes in. Two Sherlocks for the price of one. You’d have to go to, well, my own work to get that kind of a bargain.

But the question persists: is it a good Sherlock film. Seeing the old man passing his time as bee-keeper is interesting enough as a character study, but sleuthing must be afoot if we’re going to spend time with him, no? I’m happy to report the mystery is quite good, but again, of a more personal nature. It doesn’t artificially insert him in his retirement into palace intrigue, it just puts what is left of his skills to the test and believably sells the tension of the story.

It will read strangely, but I am glad I waited to finally see this one. Had I watched it before The Fourth Wall, it may have stymied my creative instincts. As it stands now, I was able to take in the story on its own terms and instead just enjoy it.