I have nothing good to say about the new SHERLOCK HOLMES, the box-office juggernaut.  Director Guy Ritchie shows a talent for loudness, and that’s all.  The movie is heavy on endless, tiring action scenes, and the overall impact is that of a period-piece James Bond rip-off.  The main plot feels like a warmed-over retread of THE DA VINCI CODE, while the more personal story is a reworking of THE FRONT PAGE, with Holmes trying to prevent Dr. Watson from getting married and subsequently dissolving their partnership.  Though I think the movie would have been improved if Jude Law had played Holmes instead of Watson, such a switch would not have changed things enough.

There was some talk, mostly before the picture was released, about the supposed homoerotic undercurrent between Robert Downey, Jr.’s Holmes and Law’s Watson, but I couldn’t detect anything of that nature in their relationship, and not just because each fellow has a female love interest.  There simply isn’t enough chemistry between the stars, on any level.  You can get much more of a gay subtext in the old Holmes pictures starring Basil Rathbone, with Nigel Bruce his comic-relief  Watson.  I recently caught up with five pictures in this series and found them, minor as they are, to be quite enjoyable.  It surely was a more innocent time at the movies (in the late 30s to the mid 40s) when Holmes and Watson could be so inseparable without raising an eyebrow, particularly since they are both unmarried and apparently not even dating women.  

THE SPIDER WOMAN (1944) begins with Rathbone and Bruce on vacation together, on a fishing trip in Scotland.  Are these guys ever apart?  They even vacation together?  The “gayest” film in the series has to be THE HOUSE OF FEAR (1945), not just because of the usual Holmes-Watson chumminess or the fact that they resemble an old married couple.  (Rathbone tells Bruce, “You snored like a pig!”)  The plot hinges on seven older-men bachelors all staying at a Scottish mansion overhanging a cliff.  They call themselves “The Good Comrades” (I guess “Boys in the Band” was taken).  They are the beneficiaries of each others’ insurance policies.  Aubrey Mather, as the owner of the mansion and also a member of the club, gives one of the nellier performances of the era.  In true TEN LITTLE INDIANS fashion, the fellows are picked off one by one, with Holmes and Watson moving in to solve the case.  Of course, the gay overtones are primarily accidental and unintentional (except in Mather’s case), what with everyone seeming so clueless on that score, not to mention sexless.  Rathbone calls Bruce “my dear friend and colleague,” but Holmes may have fainted if anyone had told him that maybe his and Watson’s devotion to each other meant that they were partners of a kind we now call life partners.