That sound you hear is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spinning in his grave, from mirth more than outrage at the sorry state of his legendary Baker Street detective, depicted here as a bumbling third-rate actor living a role created by the real deductive genius and crime fighter: Dr. John Watson.
It's a convenient (if sometimes slightly antagonistic) arrangement, with Watson finding the clues and Holmes getting the credit, and both Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley play the one-joke premise for all its worth, having a lot of fun with their respective characters. Caine is the idiotic, clumsy, lecherous and vain Sherlock Holmes, but Kingsley's Watson is no less temperamental: he has to solve the mysteries and match wits with the fiendish Moriarty while keeping his petulant alter ego under control.
The plotting is conventional and Henry Mancini's cartoon music score makes the film sound at times like a mediocre sit-com, but it's a pleasure watching two award-winning talents trample a literary icon with such impeccable comic timing and malicious glee.
It's a convenient (if sometimes slightly antagonistic) arrangement, with Watson finding the clues and Holmes getting the credit, and both Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley play the one-joke premise for all its worth, having a lot of fun with their respective characters. Caine is the idiotic, clumsy, lecherous and vain Sherlock Holmes, but Kingsley's Watson is no less temperamental: he has to solve the mysteries and match wits with the fiendish Moriarty while keeping his petulant alter ego under control.
The plotting is conventional and Henry Mancini's cartoon music score makes the film sound at times like a mediocre sit-com, but it's a pleasure watching two award-winning talents trample a literary icon with such impeccable comic timing and malicious glee.