SHERLOCK HOLMES; A GAME OF SHADOWS (Two and a Half Stars)

 

Elementary…

There’s a level of sheer frantic busy-ness and glib chaos in director Guy Ritchie’s and star Robert Downey, Jr. second Sherlock Holmes movie — Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows –that makes it, by turns, easy to enjoy and hard to stomach. This rock-‘em-shock-’em-and-Sherlock-’em Victorian slam-banger from the irrepressible Ritchie (the director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) is one of those movies that keeps blowing up in your face every ten minutes or so.

Here are some examples of rampaging goofiness, as cooked up in lock, stock and smoking barrels full by Ritchie and his screenwriters, Kieran and Michele Mulroney (actor Dermot’s younger brother and sister-in-law): There’s a somersaulting martial arts brouhaha with bad Cossacks in a huge, gaudy Victorian bordello during a rowdy bachelor party for Watson; a rapid-fire chess game between Holmes and Moriarity, conducted on a chilly mountain top balcony over the infamous Reichenbach Falls; a fast and furious train ride in which Watson seems in serious imminent peril of losing his virginity to Holmes in drag; the unnerving spectacle of Stephen Fry (who’s played both Oscar Wilde and Jeeves), here playing Sherlock’s apparently shameless brother Mycroft, prancing around barefoot to the elbows before an appalled Mary Watson (whom Holmes previously tossed off that speeding train, for her own good); and the simmering toothsome sight of a potful of hedgehog goulash, cooked gypsy style and served two-smoking-barrels hot to our heroes by Madame Simza Heron. (Holmes declares it the finest hedgehog goulash he’s ever tasted, which is what I mean by wry.)

Then there are the movie’s orgies of slow-motion, during chases, fights, dances, flights through the woods, what have you — everything it seems, but Watson‘s potential deflowering — a slow-mo Victorian deluge that sometimes suggests that Ritchie, visually, is trying to copy Sam Peckinpah, Richard Lester and Ken Russell  at the same time, but just past their primes.

The acting has Ritchie and his cast doing it mostly ‘70s-style tongue-in-cheek (Downey’s specialty, though you‘ll never see his tongue) — as if Monty Python had taken over Masterpiece Theater for an hour or two. One wonders how these movies bumped into the idea of Downey turning Holmes into a seedy-looking, unshaven, uncouth sleuth, with Law’s Watson as his straight-saber friend, but Downey makes it work, just as Harris gets the most of an essentially dramatic turn as the evil genius Moriarity

Downey saves a lot of it — acting and reacting flawlessly, backed by a fine cast that also includes Eddie Marsan (too briefly) as bumbling Inspector Lestrade, and Rachel McAdams (too, too briefly) as wicked Irene Adler. It’s just a sorry, sorry script. Downey is a great actor, I think, never more so than when a movie is blowing up all around him or he‘s forced to disguise himself as a sofa, or something harder. I’d hate to think though, that this was his prime, in any sense but a financial one — even if one senses that Guy Ritchie, a real Baker Street Irregular, is probably getting everything he ever wanted to get from this screenplay, and from the legendary Sherlock Holmes, and maybe more. I have to admit though: This is the finest hedgehog goulash I’ve ever tasted.

JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (Also Three Disc Blu-ray/3D/DVD Combo)(Two Stars)

SPOILER ALERT

A formidable task, but our heroes and heroine are up to it. (Did you ever doubt?) Along the way to the credits, The Artist Formerly Known as the Rock treats us to a genial performance of the Louis Armstrong favorite “What a Wonderful World,” with his own ukulele accompaniment; advises Sean on his love life, smiles constantly, and tops it all off by bouncing berries off his popping pectorals, making for an unprecedented 3D experience.

But, unfortunately,  more mysterious problems pop up (like the pectorals). Gabato wanders off at almost the last minute before doomsday to prospect for the Island’s gold in order to pay for his daughter’s college education. And Hank and Sean put on an amazing breath-control act when they find the Nautilus. As Roger Ebert notes, perhaps in awe: with that one breath, they dive underwater, find the ship, unscrew the hatch, swim aboard (still underwater), find the controls, fix them, start up the air, start up the engine and do three choruses of “My Baby Does the Hanky Panky,” while dancing The Swim. (No, just kidding — at least about “Hanky Panky” and The Swim.) Soon they are all safely sailing off for more mysterious adventure, rejoined by Hudgens in another tank top, by Caine, still sneakily smiling, and by Guzman, who gives up prospecting, and resumes his pursuit of the world mugging record. Go Luis! Can he make it before another island mysteriously blows up?  It’s a mystery.

END OF SPOILER

By now, some of you may believe that this review is only an elaborate joke and that no such fiasco was ever committed to celluloid. You’re wrong. It was. (Or something very like it.) Screenwriter-cousins  Mark and Brian Gunn (Bring It On Again) really wrote this script. The actors, a talented and tolerant bunch, really said these lines — and without breaking up into helpless laughter. (Unless there’s a blooper reel.) Brad Peyton, of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, really directed it. The technicians and effects guys really made bees you can ride on.

And huge audiences swarmed into theaters to see this Godawful silly but not unentertaining movie — and, I hope, to cheer on the champ, Luis Guzman. Huge DVD audiences are no doubt already queueing up. What would Jules Verne have made of it all?  Will these guys ever get their hands on “Treasure Island?” Is this the kind of thing we can expect from the big Hollywood studio movies of tomorrow? It’s, um, mysterious. 

GHOST RIDER (One and a Half Stars)

No critics’ screenings here on Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance — for reasons that become quickly apparent when you watch it. So I decided to fork over coin of the realm anyway and catch it at a multiplex. After all, I thought, how bad could it be? I mean really, seriously: How bad? With Nicolas Cage as the star, again,  this sequel to his 2007 action hit Ghost Rider, should at least boast a few amusing tantrums and memorable creep-outs. And the source material seemed vaguely promising: a Marvel comic, with Marvelmeister Stan Lee himself one of a large gang of producers and executive producers, all producing away. I hadn’t seen the first Ghost Rider, with Nic, in 2007, so I walked in without much predisposition, except for the fact that movies the studios won’t screen ahead of time are usually not worth screening — or seeing — or talking about, or even thinking about. But not always. I thought what the hell, live dangerously.

The lights dim. The movie starts. The entertainment supposedly commences. We begin presto agitato, with a very, very fast and rapidly cut action scene at an abbey somewhere in Eastern Europe. A rebel biker monk named Moreau (played by Idris Elba, who deserves better) tries to keep Satan’s illegitimate son, young Danny (played by young Feargus O’Brien, who also deserves better) and his pretty, black jacketed mom Nadya (played by Violante Placido, of The American, who deserves better too) out of the smoking hands of the devil himself, a Mephistophelean chap called Roark (played by estimable Irishman Ciarán Hinds, who, of course, deserves much better). Hinds has replaced the devil of the first movie, who was played by Peter Fonda (who vamoosed), and Lucifer’s main minion in this movie is Ray  Carrigan, played by Johnny Whitworth, who turns supernatural midway through. Whitworth also deserves better. Hell, they all deserve better, including the Devil.

Anyway, monks are bashed and hell is raised and a car-chopper chase ensues, with Moreau on his monk-cycle. For want of anything better to do, I began counting the length of the cuts in the first scene (one thousand, two thousand…). They were mostly a second or less. Pretty damn fast. Rule of Thumb: Most movies cannot survive too many action scenes composed of nothing but one second cuts, however ballsy or Wildbunchian it may make the editors feel.

Soon Cage shows up. Big entrance.  In the last movie, or so I hear, this poor sucker Johnny Blaze that Nic is playing, sold his soul to the devil to save his father’s life, and he got cheated and turned into Ghost Rider, condemned to wander forever between the winds and the sequels. But Moreau, who rather mysteriously has green eyes, tells Johnny that he can have his soul back if he rescues Danny from Roark. (Does this flaming sap believe anything you tell him?)

Maybe that’s why Cage wanted to do this character again. He’s really doing two parts here: ex-stunt-motorcyclist Johnny Blaze, who’s our familiar, sneering, sad-eyed, tantrum-tossing Nic, and Ghost Rider, who is largely a special effect and has a head that turns into a skull that bursts into flames (but rarely ever singes his collar). This Ghost Rider visual effect also blows up bad guys, sucks out their spirits or essences and shoots and pisses streams of fire. (Hey, who needs a soul?) Then he turns back into Johnny Blaze and gets to throw bizarre Nic Cage fits.

I figure Cage has worked out a cushy deal where he gets to emote and ride the chopper a little, and the special effect flaming skull dude does all the heavy lifting and heavy-duty action. But no — maybe. Cage is listed for both parts and some sources say he’s playing them both — which I hope doesn’t mean that this dedicated actor, who was said to have pulled some teeth for his part in Birdy (Cage says they had to go anyway), has pulled a “Jackie Chan” here, and is now doing his own stunts, somersaulting off speeding trucks onto burning motorcycles.

Anyway, after a while, it becomes obvious that this movie is a real stinkeroo — despite Cage, despite Elba,, despite Hinds, despite the effects guys who did Johnny’s flaming skull, despite Stan Lee, despite Violante Placido, despite everything. Nor is the film  helped much by pulling in more monks, chanting away, and scheduling later appearances by Polish actor Jacek Koman as the villainous Terroski, and Christopher Lambert as the tattooed, sullen religious advisor Methodius (a part perhaps conceived for the late Marlon Brando) — all of whom deserve better, Brando included.

Directors  Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank), a moviemaking team who sign themselves synergistically with the joint moniker Neveldine/Taylor, are so seemingly addicted to their one-second-shot-or-more cutting exercises — even in the dialogue scenes, the co-directors and editor Brian Bernan hardly ever seemed to stretch a shot beyond four seconds — that the movie becomes semi-chaotic and tends to give you a headache. (Or maybe I was just empathizing with Cage whenever his head ignited.)

That’s too bad, because Taylor/Neveldine, or Neveldine/Taylor or whoever they are, actually have an arresting, or at least interesting, visual style that’s heavy on all kinds of odd angles, including birds-eye peer-downs and shoe-level tip-ups. The script however, seems to have been thrown together by three writers who would probably prefer to remain anonymous, except at the bank, and is a total stinkeroo-guarantee — a series of chases and pyrotechnic gibberish and flame-outs and showdowns, interspersed every once in a while with dopey or expository or would-be humorous conversations, encapsulated in those hectic two to four second bursts, or with shots of Johnny Blaze. a.k.a. Ghost Rider zooming around and periodically bursting into flame, like a relentless shish kebab.

I am happy to say though that this obnoxiously clichéd, pointless, nonsensical and headache-inducing movie — out of which I eventually staggered, dumbstruck — does teach a valuable life lesson. Namely: Never sell your soul to the devil, especially in Romania. I personally have always found this to be good advice (even though I’ve never been in Romania), and I’d like to pass it along, with all due admiration and concern, to that great bizarre movie actor, one time collector of vintage chronometers, and champion fit-thrower Nicolas (Vampire’s Kiss) Cage — who deserves better.

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