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Critic Reviews

Despite a few laggard moments of slow going, Ritchie has pulled off an entertaining coup in giving us a Holmes for the 21st century by digging back to the 19th century original and adding a few bells and whistles.

-Jonathan F. RichardsFull Review

What was the thinking behind all this?

-Peter RainerFull Review

It's all knotted together, then unraveled with brio, by Holmes and Watson. There are fisticuffs galore, fiery combustion aplenty, and, yes, my dear reader, clever deduction.

-Lisa KennedyFull Review

The very idea of handing him over to professional lad Guy Ritchie, to be played as a punch-throwing quipster by Robert Downey Jr., is so profoundly stupid one can only step back in dismay.

-J. R. JonesFull Review

Downey never winks -- hea(TM)s too much of a pro for that -- but like the man hea(TM)s playing, hea(TM)s much, much smarter than the movie hea(TM)s in.

-Ty BurrFull Review

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.

-David EdelsteinFull Review

Playing literature's greatest detective as a sort of self-loathing action hero, Downey has an absolute blast. And thanks to his performance in Sherlock Holmes, so do we.

-Bill GoodykoontzFull Review

Dazzling visuals and hipster dialogue, but a story that stays true to the original source material.

-Richard RoeperFull Review

This is a swashbuckling, pratfalling romp designed to make cerebral Holmes purists drop their monocles into their teacups.

-Colin CovertFull Review

Though purists may balk at Arthur Conan Doyle's literary world being manhandled into a blockbuster by never-subtle director Guy Ritchie, Downey has a winning take on Holmes: He's always on.

-Joe NeumaierFull Review

What is surprising is how bland the results are. The explosions and action sequences have an odd cheapness to them and the central plot is one of those dreary take-over-the-world routines.

-Mary F. PolsFull Review

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.

-Michael O'SullivanFull Review

It seems that an evil aristocrat, executed for a series of murders, returns from the dead to mobilize an ancient secret society that he may have time-traveled into a Dan Brown novel to learn about. Doesn't that sound fascinating? I thought not.

-A.O. Scott

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.

-Mick LaSalleFull Review

The game is not afoot.

-Steven ReaFull Review

This is rip-roaring action-adventure of high order, a sometimes dizzying but ultimately thrilling display of showmanship on the part of the actors, director and screenwriters.

-Joy TippingFull Review

I dug it.

-Laremy LegelFull Review

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.

-Kenneth TuranFull Review

It's good enough to just sit back and enjoy Downey and Law plays Holmes and Watson as Victorian versions of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

-Peter HowellFull Review

Put away your period-movie expectations and you just might have a lot of fun. What makes this movie work is actually something very old-fashioned: movie-star chemistry.

-Moira MacDonaldFull Review

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

-Liam LaceyFull Review

If Sherlock Holmes truly is the world's most keen detective, surely he would have sniffed out that this film was a stinker.

-Adam GrahamFull Review

The less I thought about Sherlock Holmes, the more I liked Sherlock Holmes.

-Roger EbertFull Review

Who the deuce decided to filter Sherlock Holmes through Batman & Robin?

-Kyle SmithFull Review

Old London, achieved via superb visual effects, is breathtaking in its grimy verisimilitude. And Downey is charming. But his world is jarringly frenetic, in the manner of most Ritchie films.

-Claudia PuigFull Review

It's hard to get too bent out of shape about Sherlock Holmes, partly because the actors seem to take so much pleasure in the act of giving us a crazy spectacle.

-Stephanie ZacharekFull Review

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.

-Joe MorgensternFull Review

The whole film doesn't feel so much like Holmes as a strange and unwanted sequel to Will Smith's Wild Wild West.

-Stephen WhittyFull Review


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