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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Sherlock Holmes

EMAILPRINTWarner Bros. Pictures

Sherlock Holmes reviews
57
6.7 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 217 votes
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Action  |  Adventure  |  Crime  |  Drama  |  Mystery  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Michael Johnson
Anthony Peckham
Guy Ritchie

Directed by: Guy Ritchie

Release Date:
Theatrical: December 25, 2009
DVD: March 30, 2010

Running Time: minutes, Color

Origin: UK | Australia | USA

Summary

RATING: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some startling images and a scene of suggestive material

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, Eddie Marsan, and Kelly Reilly

Sherlock Holmes has made his reputation finding the truth at the heart of the most complex mysteries. With the aid of Dr. John Watson, his trusted ally, the renowned "consulting detective" is unequaled in his pursuit of criminals of every stripe, whether relying on his singular powers of observation, his remarkable deductive skills, or the blunt force of his fists. But now a storm is gathering over London, a threat unlike anything that Holmes has ever confronted...and just the challenge he's looking for. (Warner Bros.)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

80

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Downey has a winning take on Holmes: He's always on.

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75

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

This is very much a Sherlock Holmes movie for the blockbuster era.

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75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The less I thought about Sherlock Holmes, the more I liked "Sherlock Holmes." Yet another classic hero has been fed into the f/x mill, emerging as a modern superman.

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75

Boston Globe Ty Burr

It pleases me to report, then, that Downey brings his brain, his wit, and his gift for intelligent underplaying, even as he understands he has been hired to play Sherlock Holmes, action hero.

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75

Premiere Nick Starkey

Hey, remember “fun”? If you’re sick of the apocalypse and tortured anti-heroes, then you need to see Sherlock Holmes. It’s a blast from start to finish.

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70

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

There's a mystery at the heart of Sherlock Holmes, and it's not the one the great master of detection has been called on to solve. It's how a film that has so many good things going for it has turned out to be solid but not spectacular.

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70

Variety Todd McCarthy

Ritchie has never worked on a scale anything approaching this before and, while some of the directorial affectations are distracting, he keeps the action humming.

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70

The New Yorker David Denby

Challenged by Downey’s energy, Jude Law, who often seems aimless in his movies, comes fully up to speed. He’s virile and quick-witted, and his Watson, if not Holmes’s equal in brainpower, comes close to him in daring. Their repartee evokes the banter of lovers in a screwball comedy; they flirt outrageously but chastely.

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70

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The movie as a whole is clever, and conspicuously overwrought. But Mr. Downey's performance is elegantly wrought; he's as quick-witted as his legendary character, and blithely funny in the lovers' spats—all right, the mystery-lovers' spats—that Holmes keeps having with Jude Law's witty Dr. Watson.

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70

The New York Times A.O. Scott

There are worse things than loutish, laddish cool, and as a series of poses and stunts, Sherlock Holmes is intermittently diverting.

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70

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Entertaining in a glossy, mindless way.

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67

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Here's hoping that younger members of the audience will seek out Conan Doyle's original stories to further explore Holmes' official amanuensis, Dr. John Watson, whose brilliant case studies regarding his friend, roommate, and fellow rationalist are the stuff dreams are made of.

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67

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Sherlock Holmes is an odd amalgam, a top-heavy light entertainment that keeps throwing things at you and doesn't seem too concerned with whether they stick.

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63

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

Ritchie and company spend too much time being cute and not enough time being clever, resulting in a one-dimensional comic-book version of Doyle's detectives.

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63

USA Today Claudia Puig

Sherlock Holmes has been reimagined with fighting skills as potent as his intellectual acumen.

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63

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

The result is only half as hip as hoped. Yes, this Holmes is leaner and meaner, and Watson (Jude Law) is nearly his equal. But there’s still something fussy about the result, as if bobbies had broken up the party at 11:59.

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63

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The reason Sherlock Holmes fails at least as often as it succeeds is because more effort and attention was lavished upon the concept than upon the script. Given a worthy story, Downey's Holmes might have been memorable. Here, he's an interesting character in search of a worthwhile story.

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60

Empire William Thomas

A fun, action-packed reintroduction to Conan Doyle's classic characters. Part Two should provide more in the way of scope.

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60

NPR Bob Mondello

In short, Ritchie's come up with precisely what you'd expect of him — a pumped-up, anachronistically modern Sherlock Holmes designed for the ADD crowd. Expect a sequel. Or six.

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60

New York Magazine David Edelstein

By now we’ve seen so many good, bad, and indifferent Sherlocks that it’s almost a relief to get something different, however wrongheaded. And there’s no such thing as too much Downey.

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50

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Guy Ritchie's Holmes reboot feels both too complicated and too elementary, dear Watson.

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50

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

With a clamorous soundtrack and a whirl of elaborate chases and busily choreographed fight scenes, this is Sherlock Holmes with Attention Deficit Disorder.

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50

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Despite some arresting visual flourishes and Downey’s inherent likeability, it’s nearly incoherent both as cinema and as story. No, this isn’t your grandfather’s or your father’s Sherlock Holmes, but if theirs featured Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett in the lead, it was better by miles.

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50

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Guy Ritchie is the worst screenwriter in the world, but, to be fair, he is not the worst director. He is only the worst director of the people who actually get to make movies.

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50

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Not even Sherlock Holmes could make much sense out of the overplotted, murky mess that is "Sherlock Holmes," although Arthur Conan Doyle's legendarily brainy detective would probably never buy a ticket to a movie as elephant-footed as this one.

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50

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Ritchie is all about the whooshing and headbanging, leaving no space between Holmes' words to savor their meaning. Downey is irresistible. The movie, not so much.

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50

Village Voice J. Hoberman

As over-emphatic as one might expect from the ham-fisted Guy Ritchie, this resurrection of the world's most famous detective is a dank, noisy affair.

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42

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

This is certainly the grubbiest Holmes in movie history.

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40

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.

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40

Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf

This is the ultimate sin of the film, generically helmed by lad-auteur Guy Ritchie: Logic seems to be thrown out the window in order to make room for clashes on a partially completed Tower Bridge. It’s way too elementary.

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38

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

It's a serious drag to see how Ritchie has turned Holmes and Dr. Watson into a couple of garden-variety thugs.

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38

New York Post Kyle Smith

Sherlock Holmes dumbs down a century-old synonym for intelligence with S&M gags, witless sarcasm, murky bombast and twirling action-hero moves that belong in a ninja flick.

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38

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

This "Holmes" is just about as silly as it awesome. At times, Ritchie and company try so hard to make sure this isn't your father's "Sherlock Holmes" that it comes across as, well, cartoonish.

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30

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The very idea of handing him over to professional lad Guy Ritchie (who directed Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), to be played as a punch-throwing quipster by Robert Downey Jr., is so profoundly stupid one can only step back in dismay.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 217 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Steve F gave it a9:
Critics are totally wrong on this movie..I thought it was really great.

Sam J gave it a4:
This movie was boring. It was also very gray; not fun to look at, and it didn't make any sense.

Len V gave it a9:
This picture currently has the same grade as Downey's other recent blockbuster, "Iron Man 2." Both average out to a 57. That's difficult to comprehend, since the Iron Man sequel is a piece of garbage, while this movie is full of all of the suspense that the Iron Man sequel failed to capture. Applying Sherlock Holmes-like deduction to this case, I can only guess that the critics have used different standards in evaluating "Sherlock Holmes," treating it as a literary adaptation. Well, it's not Arthur Conan Doyle; it's based on a comic book version. And the result is actually better than yet another stuffy Doyle adaptation would have been: it's stylish, funny, exciting. I'm disappointed to see critics sniff at "Sherlock Holmes" just because there's a book somewhere behind it. The only misstep is Rachel McAdams, who plays her role seductively but makes it hard to imagine that she was ever a master criminal.

Matthew W gave it a5:
Let me begin by saying that "Sherlock Holmes" is a lot of fun. That said, as a movie about Sherlock Holmes, it is a failure. As a lifelong fan of the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I have seen many screen adaptations and interpretations of his most enduring creation, and this movie simply fails to do the subject matter any kind of justice. While billed, somewhat schizophrenically, as both a "return to origin" and "reinterpretation", the film definitely inclines to the latter. A romance is added, as is an emphasis on chop-socky action and physical comedy. The joy of the Holmes stories, and of all his best films, is the unraveling of the mystery. Here the mystery takes a back seat, serving as a vehicle to propel the film from one frenetic action sequence to another. The fights are kinetic and exciting, but ultimately many of them seem included for their own sake, not the sake of the story. This is truly a Sherlock Holmes for the MTV generation. Between the whizz-bang fights, some plot sometimes occurs. There is not very much, however, and what is there is underwhelming. Mark Strong is given little to do as the main villian, and his nefarious scheme does not hold up to close scrutiny. Rachel McAdams plays a totally reimagined Irene Adler, who is now a master criminal and Sherlock Holmes's love interest, a development which never appears in Conan Doyle's books. Love, in the books, is anathema to Holmes, and he would no sooner form a romantic relationship than dance naked down the Strand. A good Sherlock Holmes story must remain within the parameters that Conan Doyle set down. It must be a convincing story about Sherlock Holmes. Otherwise, why have it be about Holmes at all? Why not a different detective? The obvious answer is, of course, because the Holmes name is arguably one of the most famous brands in the English speaking world. But this is not an excuse to run roughshod over such a unique character. This is not to say that the movie is without its strong points. Quite apart from its failings as a Sherlock Holmes adventure, it is fun and features two fanstic actors (Downey and Law) as Holmes and Watson. The fights are, admittedly exciting, and the views of 1800s London are top-knotch. I can only hope that the sequel will include more plot, more mystery, and more of Conan Doyle's Holmes, not Guy Ritchie's.

Mike B gave it a9:
Cleverly done and entertaining.

Batjin gave it an8:
First of all Downey and Jude were both very good. The story was not as good as the acting. As a whole it was a decent movie. To the crics who gave 50 or below: we are living in the 21st century, where the real stories that Conan Doyle wrote wouldn't satisfy as a blockbuster movie, it needs to be embellished with fast paced action scenes (or a bit of comedy). Although I am a big fan of the books I found the slight change in the story entertaining.

Hyper S gave it an8:
The visuals (action sequences and scenery) were superb. The acting was great. And the story, while briefly making you think "oh great some unrealistic supernatural trash", comes together nicely in the end. Yes the "old" Holmes is no more in this movie.. but honestly... a more badass "I'm going to not only kick your ass with my mind, but with my fists as well" opens the door to far more interesting encounters and simply...a far more entertaining movie.

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