Brightest Young Things

Sure, this movie opened 2 weeks a go but life happens and I now finally saw it and you get the review. Whooo to the hooo.
Onto actual opinion now:
While I will still maintain that "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is hands down this year's best movie, I think "Sherlock Holmes" (alongside "Inglourious Basterds") is this year's most entertaining one. From start to finish, from top to bottom, from the first to the 133rd minute-it is (really well made) fun.

It opens up with what a scene that sets the tone perfectly for what is to come: a gray London night, a zig zaggy chariot chase (who says you need fast cars for dizzying turns?), a fight perfectly dissected for you then played up in what seems twice the speed making it both thrilling and completely plausible, and an apprehension of a hilarious and overegotistical villain (there really should be no other kinds) all within 3 minutes or so.
If you knew Guy Ritchie, (post-Madonna, getting his groove back on) directed this movie, maybe you walked in expecting all that to happen.
If, like me, with the demise of "Premiere" magazine (I miss you so much!) you know nothing about how movies are made anymore, and just walked in with a blank slate, those first 3 minutes are like eating one of those none descript candies in a box and discovering it is really the finest marzipan as opposed to some extra predictable caramel that rests in the center.
But, enough with the unfortunate writerly flourishes.

As the fourth minute kicks in, we find Dr. Watson (Jude Law, looking and acting nowhere near as whiny as usual) prepping to move out of Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr, in fine pseudo junkie form, adding another superhero notch to his belt after the equally entertaining "Iron Man") being bored and brilliant and self-destructive and Lord Blackwood, of bad teeth and too much pomade, whom we saw being apprehended at minute 3, awaiting execution.
All is well in gray London, until it isn't.
Because then, Rachel McAdams swathes in and you know it is action time.
I have always been a sucker for visual cues in movies and they have McAdams' character, Irene Adler, wear bird-of-paradise colors, clashing with all that pesky London gray all over the place: her lips are as deep burgundy as the best wine in the house, her dresses all jewel colored and peacocky in their extravagance, ruffles peeking under smart waistcoats and bows surprising you from behind.

Obviously, a woman like this is going to cure any sense of boredom or ennui that is floating around Baker street.
She hires Holmes (whom she has a history with, of course, and who has been doing the 19th century equivalent of internet stalking her by collecting all her clippings and in general creepily pining over her) to find someone and that someone is found somewhere where he shouldn't be (and where someone else, wearing too much pomade, should be resting forever) and ... off we go.
There's magic, secret societies, maybe some evil powers, lots of explosions and fights and dead rats and hanging pigs and creepy bath deaths and some sort of risque hotel moments just to balance things out (Ritchie has never really been one for any kind of explicit sexuality, if you think about it, it is all about boys being boys and women being well, mostly unnecessary, distractions in the generally un-ironic bro-down that is going on)

Downey Jr. is given enough room to chew some scenery up but everyone else proves to be up for playing the straight (wo)men to his loose cannon, and so everything works out.
Time flies by, problems get solved, and a sequel is even neatly set up in the most obvious way ("Professor Moriarty, don't underestimate him") that you (or at least I) don't even end up minding.
This is because "Sherlock Holmes" has no pretense-it is meant to be a blockbuster.
And if a blockbuster is successful (in spite of being somehow, at the same time, funny and smart(ish) and very capably made by people who know what they're doing, kind of like "Iron Man" or "Star Trek") then that blockbuster will inevitably get a sequel. Why beat around a bush with it?
No reason.

In short: while this movie will not win any awards (and while it will pain me to watch Avatar win all of them), grab some popcorn (I didn't initially but then ended up running out to get the biggest tub I could get my hands on during one of the quiet moments), a friend and have yourself a good old-fashionedly satisfying time at the movies (no gimmicky glasses or creepy blue humanoids required here, thankyouverymuch) sometime soon.