‘Holmes & Watson’ is a complete failure

Image: sony pictures entertainment

Remember when Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly collectively made the world double over with laughter in 2008’s Step Brothers? Well hold on to that feeling, because it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen with Holmes & Watson.

Starring Ferrell and Reilly as the titular Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, Holmes & Watson attempts the capture the comedic duo’s chops seen in Step Brothers and Talladega Nights in a new, historic setting. Unfortunately, that magic seems to have been lost along the way with jokes that don’t land and a backdrop that doesn’t allow for Ferrell and Reilly’s improvisation to take hold.

With 12 reviews in on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of reporting, Holmes & Watson is currently sitting at a 0 percent. That’s not a good look for writer and director Etan Cohen.

Here’s what the critics have to say about Ferrell and Reilly’s third movie together.

The setting isn’t right

Peter Debruge, Variety:

As far as Ferrell and Reilly are concerned, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s unstumpable sleuth and the thankless sidekick who recorded his every exploit are not just a great crime-solving duo but one of the great bromances of English literature — and therefore a natural target for the two actors’ ongoing exploration of dysfunctional friendships. The trouble is, Sherlock Holmes exists so large in audiences’ minds already that the pair’s uninspired take feels neither definitive nor especially fresh — just an off-brand, garden-variety parody.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club:

Written and directed by Etan Cohen (not to be mistaken for Ethan Coen, under any circumstances), Holmes & Watson imagines the title characters as a couple of needy, middle-aged manchildren—though the similarities with Ferrell and Reilly’s work together on Adam McKay’s Step Brothers end there. Struggling with objectively awful English accents, the two actors spend their time on screen dragging out terrible jokes, as though trapped in the improv-exercise equivalent of eternal damnation. Though it’s mostly the audience that suffers. Even the movie’s attempts at gross-out humor—such as an extended bit in which Holmes keeps barfing into a bucket, or a sequence where he calculates the trajectory of his arcing urine in slow-mo, à la Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes—are timorous and half-assed.

Almost all the jokes are bad

David Ehrlich, IndieWire:

Instead of picking a particular tone and wringing it for all it’s worth, Cohen just throws a mess of half-funny jokes at the wall in the hopes that some of them might stick. They don’t. Not enough of them, anyway. Mild gross-out humor (projectile vomit, cadavers baked into party cakes, etc.) is mashed together with poorly choreographed physical comedy (Holmes and Watson accidentally unleash a swarm of killer bees while trying to kill a single mosquito) and limp post-modern gags that poke fun at old technology (Watson telegrams someone a dick pic) or current events (a “Make England Great Again” hat precedes a conversation about how the Electoral College will always protect America from tyrannical grifters).

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter:

There’s at least one scene that proves mildly amusing, when Holmes silently communicates with his brother Mycroft (Hugh Laurie, who had the good sense to go uncredited) via their shared ability to “brainspeak.” It’s a slyly witty moment that contrasts with the otherwise lame slapstick permeating the frenetic proceedings. A gag involving the eating of raw onions isn’t so much running as limping. And there’s a strange amount of anachronistic Donald Trump-related humor, including bits about fake news and red MAGA hats (here reading “Make England Great Again”) that fall utterly flat in this context.

None of the actors shine

Sandy Schaefer, ScreenRant:

Holmes & Watson is missing a key ingredient from Talladega Nights and Step Brothers – namely, director Adam McKay. Where McKay knew how to create comedic scenarios that allowed Ferrell and Reilly room to improvise, Cohen’s approach seems far more dependent on scripted jokes. That wouldn’t actually be a problem if his film could settle on a clear throughline, like McKay’s films with Ferrell and Reilly had. Instead, Cohen’s script recycles Ferrell’s character arc from his 2000s comedies (his Sherlock is an egomaniacal jerk who doesn’t appreciate Watson) and can’t decide if his comical take on the super-sleuth is dumber than he thinks or too smart for his own good. Reilly isn’t given much to work with here either, and is left trying to get additional mileage from listless scenes that subject Dr. Watson to all sorts of comedic torment (be it emotional neglect or mean-spirited slapstick).

David Ehrlich, IndieWire:

The cast is rounded out by an incredible array of actors and comedians, including Kelly Macdonald as Holmes’ secretary, Hugh Laurie as Holmes’ brother, Steve Coogan as a one-armed tattoo artist, Rob Brydon as a flabbergasted inspector, and someone who shows up for a last-minute cameo so good that it almost redeems the rest of the movie. Of course, none of these people are given anything to do — forget standing out, Laurie isn’t even on-screen long enough to stand up. Usually, you’d have to watch the Golden Globes to see this much wasted talent. As it stands, the only compelling mystery about “Holmes & Watson” is how so many funny people have been squeezed into such an unfunny movie, a movie that isn’t nearly smart enough to recognize how stupid it should have been.

It’s awful

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club:

One might call it a failure on almost every level—that is, if the movie ever gave the impression that it was trying to succeed. Instead, it’s pervaded by an air of extreme laziness. It’s cheap and tacky—a bizarrely dated parody of Ritchie’s Holmes (complete with a soundalike score) poisoned with rib-elbowing topical references and puerile gags. It’s the Sherlock Holmes movie with the red “Make England Great Again” hat and the lactating Watson. It succeeds in only one respect. As a Christmas Day release that wasn’t screened in advance for critics, it managed to avoid our list of the worst films of 2018. It belongs at the top.

Holmes & Watson is in theaters now.