Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

My wife and I finally went to see SH2 last weekend. Here are my impressions. I loved the first Sherlock Holmes movie. 5 stars all the way. The second one also was great, but not quite as great as the first. Maybe 4 ½ stars. Anyway, here is a quick rundown on what I loved about the movie, what I liked about the movie, and what I disliked.


Loved:

Moriarty and Holmes! Every time they’re on the screen together is pure gold. These are the times when I feel that RDJ most perfectly embodies the Holmes character. I would pay the ticket price to see Holmes and Moriarty play a chess game for 2 hours.

Watson! Jude Law is seriously the best Watson I’ve ever seen on screen. He even remembered his limp this time around.


Liked:

Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes. Fry was born to play this part, and he does it flawlessly. Unfortunately Mycroft is woefully underutilized in this story. Hopefully this will be remedied if there is a third movie.


Disliked:

Irene Adler. Without giving any spoilers, I just have to say that I hated what they did with Adler in this movie.

Generic gypsy lady. Seriously, couldn’t we do a better job with our female characters?

Explosions. I thought the first movie balanced the action and story perfectly. This one is whole-hog action. Everything explodes, even the trees. I think the directors just wanted to take everything in the first movie and ratchet it up about 5 notches, but it doesn’t necessarily work in this case.


So anyway, there’s my take on the movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to.