Nut 'im!

I won’t lie to you, my knowledge of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes is centred almost exclusively around that seminal Disney movie, Basil the Great Mouse Detective. I haven’t read the books, or watched the television series, or even been for a pint in the Conan Doyle. But I can only assume this was helpful to me when viewing Guy Ritchie’s latest offering, Sherlock Holmes.

Frinstance, despite my lack of research, I have a notion that there were fewer explosions and less bare knuckle boxing in the original stories than there were in this film. Whilst this might be an issue for Holmes fans, it didn’t bother me in the slightest. In fact I thought it all very jolly, as my Grandma used to say; even the ridiculously overlong fight with the enormous French henchman – or Frenchman, if you will. And I did like Robert Downey Jr’s big confused face confusing about all the time. He has a nice face.

Downey plays Holmes as a sort of less bastardy Withnail, incapable of looking after himself but bastard clever and shambolically stylish with it. Jude Law’s Watson, meanwhile, is a surprisingly good foil (unless for some reason you like Jude Law, which I don’t, but if you do I suppose you might not be surprised by his goodness) and theirs is one of the more entertaining onscreen bromances of recent years.

Female characters are fairly peripheral, but Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler has some pretty sweet dresses and she does steal a guy’s wallet so yay, another blow struck for feminism there.

I would counsel against sitting in the front row if you see this film, because it makes some of the action sequences quite difficult to follow and causes bad guy Mark Strong’s apparently freakishly large head – accentuated by a daft haircut – to appear even larger. The man could crush puppies with those almighty jaws.

But, in spite of our less than ideal neck craning seating circumstances I enjoyed this rip-roaring comic book of a film very much. It's not outstandingly amazing, but there are lots of good moments, and I was never bored. If you can't be bothered to see it in the cinema, definitely give it a look when it comes on telly in a couple of Christmas's time.