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"FacebookPinterest\n\n Anyone whose first exposure to Sherlock Holmes was Guy Ritchie&amp;#39;s 2009 screen revamp deserves the world&amp;#39;s pity for sure. But on its own buffed-up, noisy terms, the movie wasn&amp;#39;t terrible, starting with the steampunky notion that a man of Holmes&amp;#39;s gifts wouldn&amp;#39;t have fit comfortably into Queen Victoria&amp;#39;s England. Instead, Robert Downey Jr. played him half-cracked, disheveled, impatient and rude\u2014an idea that probably had Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mimicking a cement mir in his grave, but wasn&amp;#39;t without its charms. Fan though I am of the Holmes stories, your movie wallah has spent worse afternoons at the multiplex.\n\n The two hours of my one and only life that got clubbed into insensibility by the new Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, however, have me wondering how I&amp;#39;d rather have wasted them if I had a choice. Snorkeling lessons in a septic tank, maybe? Assessing Newt Gingrich as a novelist? I think I&amp;#39;m going to go with coaching the Indianapolis Colts, but feel free to chime in with suggestions. Christmas is coming, after all.\n\n Downey is back as Holmes, naturally\u2014along with Ritchie, Jude Law (Dr. Watson) and producer Joel Silver, whose slobzilla approach is in full effect now that Holmes is just another brand name. Different screenwriters, though\u2014and only two of &amp;#39;em this time, where the first one listed five. Maybe Silver and Ritchie would have been better off hiring more chimps from the typing pool.\n\n The big addition to the cast is Holmes&amp;#39;s nemesis Professor Moriarty, the &amp;quot;Napoleon of crime.&amp;quot; He&amp;#39;s played by Mad Men&amp;#39;s token Brit, Jared Harris, who doesn&amp;#39;t acquit himself too badly. But that&amp;#39;s only because Harris gets through his scenes without either turning crimson from embarrassment or suddenly biting Downey on the leg to avoid having to recite his next moronically &amp;quot;cunning&amp;quot; line.  Culminating in an honest-to-gosh literal chess game\u2014how&amp;#39;s that for inventiveness?\u2014this duel of wits is awfully short on the vital ingredient. If the script had only turned Moriarty into a genius pastry chef or something, Holmes could have triumphantly revealed that he makes a mean cherry cobbler himself. Then they could have heaved pies at each other at the climax.\n\n What that climax is supposed to be a climax to, by the way, would have me stumped even if I&amp;#39;d been interested to begin with. The premise isn&amp;#39;t unpromising, since you could do worse for a Holmes pastiche than to make the era&amp;#39;s anarchist bombings the story&amp;#39;s backdrop. In Game of Shadows, they&amp;#39;re all being orchestrated by Moriarty, who wants to start a European war and make a fortune off munitions. But how Holmes figures that out is anybody&amp;#39;s guess\u2014and the whole brilliant-deduction thing ought to at least play a role in a Sherlock Holmes movie, you know?\n\n Instead, the movie lumbers incoherently from one stunt-heavy sequence to the next. Barely pretending they&amp;#39;re connected, Ritchie is unable to make them build on each other even in terms of creating thrill-ride momentum. While he&amp;#39;s always been sloppy, this could be the most ineptly staged movie of his I&amp;#39;ve ever sat through: The camera placement never gives you your bearings as to where anybody is in a scene. Costly-looking fancy-dress extras and swank locales go to waste because he honestly doesn&amp;#39;t seem to know it&amp;#39;s his job to make them atmospheric. Surprisingly cheesy CGI does its best to convince us that the whole claustrophobic, lead-footed mess is actually eye-popping. You&amp;#39;ll be glad to hear that the director&amp;#39;s idea of hiding these flaws in post-production seems to have been to hire a six-year-old with ADD to edit the movie after introducing the kid to cocaine.\n\n No matter how you try to dumb down your expectations, the deadliest thing about Game of Shadows is that it&amp;#39;s no damn fun. By and large, that goes for the acting, too, although Law\u2014who&amp;#39;s plainly happier playing a sidekick than he&amp;#39;s ever been as a lead\u2014has a few chipper moments here and there. So does Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes, but they&amp;#39;re both undone by the script&amp;#39;s stupidities. That includes bits whose nasty streak is all the more offensive for staying safely PG-13: Watson slipping out of frame in a way that implies performing fellatio on Holmes, for instance, or Fry\u2014who&amp;#39;s neither young nor slender\u2014implausibly parading around nude, in a sub-Austin Powers routine, in front of Watson&amp;#39;s new bride (Kelly Reilly). Since Hugh Laurie&amp;#39;s old Jeeves Wooster partner may well have been the only person on the set who&amp;#39;s actually read Conan Doyle, I hope Fry at least murmured an objection or two before dropping his pants.\n\n As for Downey, sorry, kids: I&amp;#39;ve had it. Yes, of course the most cynical actor in Hollywood can act rings around most movie stars in his lucrative franchise-flick league\u2014and yes, he knows it, too. That&amp;#39;s why RDJ is cynical, and let&amp;#39;s never forget that real cynicism takes brains. But there&amp;#39;s such a thing as adding class to a project, and then there&amp;#39;s such a thing as being the thinking man&amp;#39;s Jerry Lewis. He seemed piqued by playing Sherlock Holmes last time around, but now it&amp;#39;s all mugging and open contempt for an audience willing to pay for this tripe. Maybe you&amp;#39;ll agree and maybe you won&amp;#39;t, but I swear I&amp;#39;d like him better if he were stupid."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/sherlock-holmes-game-of-shadows-tom-carson-review>