Review of Mr. Holmes (2015) by Franz H — 11 Nov 2015

Ian McKellen's dreadfully over-acted portrayal of a doddering, retired Sherlock Holmes. The movie was boring and disjointed and uninteresting. It's about bees. And Holmes' interactions with his housekeeper and her son.

With flashbacks to his visit to Japan to find an herbal medicine. And relatively brief segments about his last unsolved case when he retired, about a wife who goes places to play a musical instrument behind her husband's back.

Though I'm not sure if that was an actual case, or Holmes was just writing a story about a fictional case. And I'm not sure what the crime was. Or if there was a crime. I don't think that playing musical instruments behind your husband's back is a crime.

I was pretty much nodding off throughout the film due to lack of interest. Either way, I didn't care about anything in this film. And throughout this boring mess, McKellen portrays Holmes as a caricature of a terminally grouchy, walking-dead old man with no personality, no energy, and no wit.

If you're looking for a film about Sherlock Holmes using his wonderful deductive reasoning to solve a crime, look elsehwere. There is no Sherlock Holmes here, just an old guy stumbling through his last, uninteresting and uneventful days.

This is one of those movies that "seems" like it's a good movie, but in fact it's just long and boring and uninteresting.