Director Guy Ritchie and actors Robert Downey Junior (Sherlock Holmes) and Jude Law (Doctor Watson) return to the world of Sherlock Holmes to make a sequel to the 2009 box office hit, how does it fare to its Predecessor? I’d say it works, as a farce that is.
The problem with many sequels and like this one, is that the plot is practically the same, but with different focus on some aspects instead of the other, but the general gist of it is the following: More outrageous laugh out loud humor, less subtle, wacky dialogue between Watson and Holmes and in this movie instead of pondering is the antagonist a wizard or a man of science, we see the battle against Moriarty, what are his motivations? What does he gain from all of this? Why does he do this? So yeah it’s the same movie more or less.
Moriarty as a villain works, the movie begins months after the 1st film and off-screen Holmes has foiled and deduced plenty of Moriarty’s schemes but not the very end game of it, and these men have the big ego contest while the antagonist is more than happy to play very dirty and hurt those Holmes cares about, you can presumably understand what I mean by this.
I feel that people who cherish more subtle humor and with less expectations, will enjoy the 1st film more, but if you’re a fan of more outrageous, crazy over the top humor with some glorious slash fiction-inspiring scenery, you might enjoy this sequel more. I personally feel more subtle humor works when it comes to re-watch value, but this movie had many laugh out loud scenes that I will be remembering.
I felt the actors give their top performances yet again, but again they did go over the top with Holmes’ detective mode, the slow motion scenes where we see all the engine clockwork spins and at the very end we see such an over the top brawl-planning, that I can’t help but to keep calling this movie a farce of the 1st movie, that’s why I rather liked it for my viewing, it was just a parody of the 1st movie with enchanted bromance to the mix.
The music is a bit different from the 1st film, it has the same tune, but I felt the 1st movie had a better soundtrack from my favorite movie composer Hans Zimmer.
So again, you can either re-watch the 1st movie and enjoy it’s subtle humor, or you can watch an over the top outrageous farce, I’d say it’s definite worth to watch for 1 time, and maybe because of this review you may have lesser expectations that might make this movie a more surprise to you, who knows, right?