Mr. Holmes (2015)

Film: Mr. Holmes (2015)
Stars: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hattie Morahan, Hiroyuki Sanada
Director: Bill Condon
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I frequently talk about how films have a case of the "handsomes" (at least I talk about this with myself-probably not with other human beings, but I feel like conversation with other human beings may be overrated...or I may need to get out of the house more).  This is when a film is just fine-it works well, it is attractive on paper, but it's a bit boring.  It's kind of what three-star ratings were invented for, and I frequently attribute the term to movies that are too good to be bad, but not remotely good enough to be excited about.  There's a flip side of this, though, that I also frequently discuss (yes, with myself...we get it, I need a life), which is a film having a case of the "pleasants."  These are the sorts of films that are extremely easy-going, rainy day movies that your aunt can't stop talking about, frequently taking place in Britain or some foreign country where the actors are shockingly over fifty and no one seems to give a damn or push them to a supporting part.  The sorts of movies that star Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, and yes, he's now at that stage of his life where they star Ian McKellen.  These are the movies that arthouses adore because they provide strong counter-programming in the summer when arthouses are struggling for content before Oscar season grants them reprieve (get to your arthouses in the summer people-that's the only way we get better movies year-round!).  I generally tend to like a "pleasant" film over a "handsome" one if only because it's usually more fun, though I will acknowledge its limitations.  That's pretty much how I felt about Mr. Holmes-fun but nothing particularly challenging to go along with the lightness.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about an aging Sherlock Holmes (McKellen), a weird hybrid of the character written by Arthur Conan Doyle, here both a real-life person and the famed character (here it is John Watson, his assistant, and not Doyle who had written the stories).  At the age of 93 the retired detective is dealing with Alzheimer's, and frequently finds himself slipping back to old cases, and realizing that he cannot remember how his last case ended.  Dr. Watson embellished in the stories and gave the book and film a happy ending when Holmes knows that not to be the case (there's probably one of the best cameos you're going to see this year when Nicholas Rowe, the star of the 1980's Young Sherlock Holmes, makes a cameo as the Basil Rathbone-influenced Sherlock Holmes that is shown onscreen-it's meta to the max, but also the cheekiest bit of clever).  As a result, Holmes must discover once again a case, this time one that he solved decades earlier, with the help of a young aspiring boy who idolizes him named Roger (Parker) and to the chagrin of his mother Mrs. Munro (Linney).

The film is strongest when it's focusing entirely on Holmes himself.  Ian McKellen is one of my favorite working actors and it's been a while, quite frankly, since I've seen him as something other than Magneto or Gandalf, so it's a nice refresher on how charming he can be outside of such a role (actually, it's been a long time for everybody-this is the first time that McKellen has appeared onscreen as neither of those two characters since 2006's The Da Vinci Code, which is sort of staggering to believe).  Particularly in his younger self he finds so much life in this Holmes fellow-he might not be the man we have known for years, the wonkish loner from Baker Street precisely, but he is in fact still wry and wanting to solve the case, and he still does his "just look at him" trick which is bliss.  I have admittedly read these stories since I was a kid (I am a hopeless sucker for mysteries) so I have a lot of love for this particular detective, and though I like seeing him brought out and stretched by reality, it was still fun to see where his original case landed, which was roughly where I expected but still quite fascinating to see how it destroyed Holmes' detective agency.

The "present-day" scenes, however, are not as intriguing.  We see Holmes interact with a bratty kid named Roger, who dotes on Holmes and disparages his kind, hard-working mother, who is played as a saint.  I don't want to say too much about Linney here, since I've missed her something fierce on movie screens in her two year absence (and quite frankly I haven't seen a new Laura Linney movie since The Savages, which is heart-breaking considering how marvelous she was on The Big C which also went off the air two years ago), but this is just okay.  She's Laura Linney so it's very watchable, but she's not stretching any imaginations here and it's hard to fathom the woman who deservedly won Oscar nominations for You Can Count on Me and The Savages is being wasted here sharing cliches with Ian McKellen and getting nothing from a bratty child who seems to be a clone of that kid from Love Actually.  Well, at least she's not going the Frances McDormand route and starring in a Michael Bay sequel (oh wait, Laura Linney's in the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie-it's late enough on a Saturday, you can get that drink).

With the present-day mysteries being a letdown in the Japanese scenes and relatively obvious based on the heavy foreshadowing for what is killing the bees, while we get solid acting from McKellen (it's kind of heartbreaking to watch Ian McKellen, hero for so many, including me, slowly start to age but he does it with a very believable sharpness that I admired for his character), the film is a mixed bag.  The past scenes are worth the price of admission and cheeky good fun, and the film never stops being watchable, but the ending is sappy to the extreme and I wasn't wowed by Milo Parker's crucial role as Roger, Holmes' young Watson stand-in.  Overall we'll go with three stars-if you love "pleasant" films as I do and wish for more mysteries on the big-screen, buy the ticket.  And if you have, share your thoughts below!  What did you think of this latest outing of the Sherlock Holmes character?  What director will take pity on all of us and give Laura Linney a decent part again (Bill Condon, the guy who got her her second Oscar nomination, seemed like a solid bet so this is pretty depressing that it becomes a "mom" role)?  Let's see some thoughts!