The Harshest ‘Holmes & Watson’ Reviews

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly have starred together in comedies like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Step Brothers, delivering audiences endlessly quotable scenes that are just as popular today as when they were released more than a decade ago. The duo has teamed up once again for a reimagining of Sherlock Holmes, though Holmes & Watson is earning some of the worst reviews of the year.

In the film, legendary detective Sherlock Holmes (Ferrell) and his partner Doctor Watson (Reilly) return for a comedic take on their classic literary partnership, as they use their incredible deductive minds to solve a mystery.

One indication that the film wasn’t going to be a success is that the studio didn’t hold any advanced screenings for critics, which meant that, when the film opened on Christmas Day, it was up to critics to venture to the theater to catch a screening to write a review. According to Rotten Tomatoes, only 30 reviews of the film have been submitted, most of which are negative, resulting in a six percent positive score on the site. Additionally, the film has only earned a 25 percent positive score from audiences who have submitted their scores to the site.

Scroll down to see what critics are saying about Holmes & Watson, in theaters now.

IndieWire

Over at IndieWire, David Ehrlich points out that, while the film has an impressively talented cast, the script and overall story wastes their talents.

“None of these people are given anything to do — forget standing out, [Hugh] Laurie isn’t even on-screen long enough to stand up. Usually, you’d have to watch the Golden Globes to see this much wasted talent. As it stands, the only compelling mystery about Holmes & Watson is how so many funny people have been squeezed into such an unfunny movie, a movie that isn’t nearly smart enough to recognize how stupid it should have been.”

You can read the full review here.

The Hollywood Reporter

Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter points out how short this new pairing falls when looking at Ferrell and Reilly’s previous collaborations.

“You can feel the flop sweat emanating from the third onscreen pairing of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Making their previous vehicles Step Brothers and Talladega Nights seem the height of comic sophistication by comparison, Holmes & Watson features the duo parodying Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous characters to devastatingly unfunny effect. Numerous talented British thespians are wasted in supporting roles in this Christmas turkey that, not surprisingly, wasn’t screened in advance for critics”

You can read the full review here.

The New York Times

Ben Kenigsberg at The New York Times points out that, while the film isn’t an entirely abysmal affair, it could be much more enjoyable if audiences imbibe in some of Holmes’ favorite recreational substances.

“As the movie stands, smuggling in booze to dispel the sense of dull routine could only help. Sony sneaked this parody into theaters on Christmas without screenings for critics, normally evidence that the film in question is less than the work of a mastermind. Still, a viewing of the movie doesn’t quite solve the mystery of why the distributor deep-sixed the latest chapter in an enduring partnership — not of Holmes and Watson, but of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. True, the almost Dadaist, apparently improvisational banter they brought to Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Step Brothers has been tempered this time by familiarity, the constraints of the period setting and the need for the movie to follow of the contours of a lackluster whodunit.”

You can read the full review here.

Variety

Peter Debruge at Variety notes that, adding to the underwhelming film itself, the film feels even more frustrating due to how much potential the film wastes. 

“Let the record show that Ferrell, Reilly, and [director Etan]Cohen each have far more malodorous credits to their name. Heck, even Sherlock Holmes has survived worse stinkers. But the characters offer so much more promise than anyone here chooses to exploit — give Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes a look, or sample revisionist Without a Clue for a clever twist — and passing up that opportunity is a crime graver than any Moriarty threatens to commit.”

You can read the full review here.

The AV Club

One of the more brutal takedowns of the film comes from The AV Club‘s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, calling it one of the worst films of the year.

“One might call it a failure on almost every level—that is, if the movie ever gave the impression that it was trying to succeed. Instead, it’s pervaded by an air of extreme laziness. It’s cheap and tacky—a bizarrely dated parody of [director Guy] Ritchie’s Holmes (complete with a soundalike score) poisoned with rib-elbowing topical references and puerile gags. It’s the Sherlock Holmes movie with the red ‘Make England Great Again’ hat and the lactating Watson. It succeeds in only one respect. As a Christmas Day release that wasn’t screened in advance for critics, it managed to avoid our list of the worst films of 2018. It belongs at the top.”

You can read the full review here.

Entertainment Weekly

Holmes & Watson includes the spin that it incorporates modern references into its narrative, which Dana Schwartz at Entertainment Weekly claims is one of the film’s biggest comedic fumbles.

“If you choose to watch this movie, you’ll be treated to an hour and a half of different versions of the same gag: what if [insert modern thing] somehow existed in Victorian times!? It’s the laziest possible punchline, if you can call it a punchline at all. Where is the joke, for example, in a random pedestrian addressing a newspaper and scoffing, ‘This is fake news!’? Or Sherlock Holmes trying on a fez that says MAKE ENGLAND GREAT AGAIN? Or Watson attempting a ‘self-photograph,’ duck-face included, with an old-timey camera? A spin-class on penny-farthing bicycles is probably one of three or four moments that might be worth a chuckle, but that aside, it’s a cavalcade of obvious and heavy-handed references lacking either point of view or sense of humor.”

You can read the full review here.

RogerEbert.com

The last big-budget outing of Sherlock Holmes came in 2011 with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, though RogerEbert.com‘s Peter Sobczynski think the film’s failures could definitely put a hold on any future plans for the character.

“I am not going to flat-out say that Holmes & Watson, the latest big-screen vehicle for the character that finds him being played by Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as his aide, Dr. John Watson, is so bad that it could bring his seemingly endless streak of movie appearances to a definitive halt. But if any film could possess that power, this is the one. Holmes and Watson is so excruciatingly awful that you have to wonder what it was, other than their paychecks, that could have possessed the cast and crew to keep coming back each day, when it must have been obvious from the first day of shooting that the project was the most hopeless of cases imaginable.”

You can read the full review here.