Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s latest movie Holmes and Watson was released in theaters on Christmas yesterday. It did fourth among holiday blockbusters such as Aquaman, Bumblebee and Mary Poppins Returns and earned 6.4 Million on opening day. Unfortunately that will probably be the best it ever does.
Checking Rottentomatoes.com the score sits at 0% for critics and a 17% for movie goers. That is an average of 1.5/5 for 864 viewers at the time of this writing. That is bad.
It is super disappointing considering that we know that Ferrell and Reilly have the capacity to make a really great movie together. Step Brothers(2008) is something I still pull quotes from today. Checking the rotten tomatoes score for that one critics still only gave it a 55% fresh rating, so perhaps there is still time for the score to go up on Holmes and Watson. If the rating sticks then it will be one of three movies that earned a zero percent this year. The other two were London Fields starring Amber Heard and Gotti with John Travolta.
One of the main problems seems to be that the movie wasn’t screened in advance for critics in the first place. It makes one wonder if that was because the filmmakers knew they missed with this film or if it was just gross negligence. Perhaps they thought Ferrell and Reilly would be big enough names to draw a crowd on their own. Normally that would be true, at least for me who is familiar with their other works, but in all honesty another Sherlock Holmes and Watson remake/parody really doesn’t interest me. That was the take away for many of the people who did have something to say on the film as well.
Some of the reviews up on rotten tomatoes are:
“Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly fail to muster the chemistry from their previous efforts in Ethan Cohen’s witless take on the legendary detective.”
-Aaron Peterson, The Hollywood Insider
“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!?”
– Dana Schwartz, Entertainment Weekly
“There was once a time when Will Ferrell made funny movies.”
-Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com
Ouch….
Here is the trailer for it, you tell me if it looks interesting.
Watching this I totally get what they are saying when they mentioned “what if modern thing exists”. That whole selfie thing was such and easy joke. The kid saying “No shit Sherlock,” made me just go ugh. Apparently there are a lot of gags in this movie that are beneath the duo performing them.
There is still time for more reviews for the movie to come in and hopefully that could raise the score a little bit. I have this morbid curiosity to go see it now for a full Nerdbot review but I’m not sure even that is enough to make me want to pay for tickets. Especially when there is still Spider-Man into the Spiderverse I need to see.
Are you going to see this movie despite the horrible rating? Tell us in the comments!
