I had an opportunity to go to a press screening last night of the new Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes. I went in with low expectations as this is a Guy Ritchie film (i.e. Swept Away, RollnRolla, and Revolver) and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. The chemistry between Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr was perfect. Is there any role Downey can?t play well? The CG looked believable and the costumes were Oscar worthy. The pacing of the movie flowed well and story didn?t require that you leave your brain at home, with a nice Sherlock Holmes twist at the end. This movie should definitely end Guy Ritchie?s streak of poorly received films. I really enjoyed Ritchie?s earlier films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Then it dawned on me, Madonna was killing his film mojo. I did a little research and sure enough he married Madonna after Snatch (that?s when his films went downhill). When he divorced Madonna, bingo. He got his mojo back. 3 of 4 stars.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle's world-famous sleuth was given a modern face-lift resulting in Sherlock Holmes taking on the mantle of a action-hero in this 128-min movie that was directed by Guy Ritchie. I enjoyed the skillful cinematography by Philippe Rousselot and the gorgeously designed costumes by Jenny Beaman. Strong compelling performances by Mark Strong and Rachel McAdams' trumped both Robert Downey Jr.'s and Jude Law's performances. The special effects, CGI, set design, and production quality are all excellent. However, this movie incarnation of Sherlock Holmes was screen-written by the team of Michael Robert Johnson, Simon Kinberg and Anthony Peckham - and was based on a story by Lionel Wigram and Michael Robert Johnson - resulting in a bloated plot and a perversion of the classic Sherlock Holmes character. If I did not know better, I would have thought that Sherlock Holmes was possessed. The sprinkling of humor felt forced. Good, but not great.

Slow script. The movie dragged in several places. I found myself looking at my watch to see how much longer I'd have to sit through this. Interesting scenery and special effects.

It's true that a few lines of the dialog were quotes from the original Holmes stories... but these were actually somewhat jarring, as the rest of the movie was pretty much made up out of thin air. It's obvious that there was no real attempt to capture the essence of Sherlock Holmes, much less capture the flavor of Conan Doyle's writings. This movie could've featured some other fictional protagonist, and aside from those few quotes I mentioned, nothing would've needed to change except for the names. Of course, then they couldn't draw upon the name Sherlock Holmes to rake in more money, could they? Go see this movie if you're interested, just don't expect it to be a Sherlock Holmes movie. It isn't. You'll probably enjoy it just fine; the problem, however, is that this generation of moviegoers is likely to come away with a really distorted view of Sherlock Holmes-- and given how great a literary character he is, that's a real shame.

This movie was funny, smart, exciting, sexy (for both genders) and really worth all the pre-hype. Robert Downey Jr. just can't miss these last couple years. As a bonus saw the Iron Man 2 trailer, looks exciting. Jude Law and Rachel Mcadams brought it as well. Way to go. Fun movie, watch it in theatres.