The main draw is clearly Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as Holmes and Watson and the actors playing off each other. This mostly works and is entertaining to watch, so one can be satisfied. Will Ferrell is very good at speaking in a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual fake British way, while maintaining his overall trademark stupidity. John C. Reilly is the perfect match as the humble, fawning buddy Watson, who dreams of being fully recognised as his "Co-Detective", but can also have pompous manners in his role as a Doctor.
The humour must be called stupid, but this is true also of 75%-100% of jokes in movies which count as way better, either just relative in ratings, or as truly good. I would dare anyone to enlist all the intelligent moments and lines that made them appreciate the actors in comedies. The truth is, the humour is pretty much the standard one gets anywhere, but I would say still more successful on average and fluid than in many other comedies. Something about it feels like genuine jokes among friends, and associative but still poignant (there is never a tedious improvisional feel), although the dialogue also features some effective use of old vocabulary.
One of the main visual jokes or running gags (and as one might have hoped) is probably the imitation of the slow-mo analysis and "calculations" of actions in an inner monologue, full of diagrams and rare words, in a similar manner to Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie. Not all of those sequences are equally good, but they are overall fun and exactly what they needed to do, given the premise.
One of my favourite scenes is Watson trying to speak like a "real doctor" to a woman doctor. (There is nothing meaningful about it, it's just funny.) Hilarious is also one game of chess between Holmes and Watson.
Something off-putting might be the overall grime and vulgarity of the setting, e.g. When they go to the docks, and some jokes are just genuine crap (like one scene of "romance"). But that is also not a special problem, nor does it overshadow everything else. The story also isn't particularly cleverly executed and the overall structure is pure Hollywood cliché. But some scenes are praisworthy at least in looking properly historical.
I would guess that not a small part of the hate comes from two short moments of dialogue, one where UK and US government systems are compared, and there are casual references to Trump getting elected (by using the words "trumped-up", showman and business man), and one even more forced and awkward line about getting true justice. (By "a jury of white property-owners" - but one has to understand this is still just a slight self-irony, not a critique, in the context of criticizing something else as injustice.) Someone might hate them for supposedly being an attempt to make the comedy more "relevant" or satirical, while many more probably simply hate a casual shot against Trump. I personally think those lines are too casual and minor to matter overall, and they probably haven't been worked on much.
Every once in a while, a work, in any medium, gets a full blow of hate and hypocrisy, over things that are either not much different or no worse than some other, ignored nonsense elsewhere. I think this is one of those works. It delivers its "stupid humour" in a more entertaining way than many other comedies which get a pass or many laughs.
The humour must be called stupid, but this is true also of 75%-100% of jokes in movies which count as way better, either just relative in ratings, or as truly good. I would dare anyone to enlist all the intelligent moments and lines that made them appreciate the actors in comedies. The truth is, the humour is pretty much the standard one gets anywhere, but I would say still more successful on average and fluid than in many other comedies. Something about it feels like genuine jokes among friends, and associative but still poignant (there is never a tedious improvisional feel), although the dialogue also features some effective use of old vocabulary.
One of the main visual jokes or running gags (and as one might have hoped) is probably the imitation of the slow-mo analysis and "calculations" of actions in an inner monologue, full of diagrams and rare words, in a similar manner to Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie. Not all of those sequences are equally good, but they are overall fun and exactly what they needed to do, given the premise.
One of my favourite scenes is Watson trying to speak like a "real doctor" to a woman doctor. (There is nothing meaningful about it, it's just funny.) Hilarious is also one game of chess between Holmes and Watson.
Something off-putting might be the overall grime and vulgarity of the setting, e.g. When they go to the docks, and some jokes are just genuine crap (like one scene of "romance"). But that is also not a special problem, nor does it overshadow everything else. The story also isn't particularly cleverly executed and the overall structure is pure Hollywood cliché. But some scenes are praisworthy at least in looking properly historical.
I would guess that not a small part of the hate comes from two short moments of dialogue, one where UK and US government systems are compared, and there are casual references to Trump getting elected (by using the words "trumped-up", showman and business man), and one even more forced and awkward line about getting true justice. (By "a jury of white property-owners" - but one has to understand this is still just a slight self-irony, not a critique, in the context of criticizing something else as injustice.) Someone might hate them for supposedly being an attempt to make the comedy more "relevant" or satirical, while many more probably simply hate a casual shot against Trump. I personally think those lines are too casual and minor to matter overall, and they probably haven't been worked on much.
Every once in a while, a work, in any medium, gets a full blow of hate and hypocrisy, over things that are either not much different or no worse than some other, ignored nonsense elsewhere. I think this is one of those works. It delivers its "stupid humour" in a more entertaining way than many other comedies which get a pass or many laughs.