Patman

In the 2nd installment of the Guy Ritchie-helmed Sherlock Holmes franchise, Holmes and Watson are faced with going up against a brilliant mind in Prof. Moriarity, even though they don't quite know how well insinuated Moriarity is within the various governments in Europe of the 1890s, or his end game. Jared Harris is actually quite good as the good professor.

I think I dislike the color palette of these Sherlock Holmes films, just too dingy and rusty-grey. RDJ's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes is almost insufferable at times, and even with Watson's bluster and exasperation with SH's antics, their relationship dynamic just doesn't quite do it for me. Noomi Rapace's character in this film doesn't really have much to do, and it feels like a wasted casting choice given the role as written (she stares a lot at Sherlock, it seems). The Holmes' slo-mo brain-cam footage was novel in the first film, but seems to be overly used in this film, and the slo-mo is also used in an extended getaway sequence that seems to overstay its welcome too, it just makes the pacing far too languid and somewhat boring.

That being said, I think I liked the last act of the film more than the initial setup and mid acts.

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.

Iron_Giant

Wife and I went to the movie last night, loved many things about the movie, some of it was a little boring.

But, the whole theater erupted in amazement laughter and clamping in the last 2 min of the movie.

For the most part, the movies stick with the books. The last 10 min of the movie was from the books, changed a bit for the big screen.

Wish I could give examples, but I do not to ruin the movie for those who have not seen the movie yet, even with spoilers turned on.

Supermallet

So there was a lot of clamping, eh?

Iron_Giant

Spell check or brain fart, that is funny

jdslater1

Saw this today. 3/5 I think.

It was a case of "people liked that in the first so lets give it to them 4 times as much!". e.g. disguises.

The bickering between them got on my nerves after awhile aswell.

But loved the Moriarty scenes, Harris was a great choice. The action scenes were well handled but would be nice if he cut down on the slo-mo.

Matthew Chmiel

I finally caught this yesterday, for the same exact reasons I spelt out in my recent Underworld: Awakening post (TL;DR: wife wanted to see it, I didn't, held out until the last possible second before it left theaters).

I didn't like the first film, but I thought A Game of Shadows was a far more entertaining and interesting entry. I think the last post describes why I liked it more:

This. This is why I enjoyed the sequel more. It didn't feel as boring to me as Richie's first venture, they managed to kill off or forget entirely (until the end) the nonessential characters from the first film, they made the action scenes something of note, and they increased the homosexual undertones by a thousand. I was still hoping that Holmes and Watson would rip off each others clothes during the final scene and just go at each other bareback.

I still enjoyed Downey and Law, Harris was good as Moriarty, but Noomi Rapace didn't really do anything other than act as gypsy eye candy. Hopefully for the third film, Richie and company can actually develop a female character who actually does something. At least she was easy on the eyes and wasn't as grating as McAdams.

I personally believe that BBC's Sherlock is a far superior adaptation than this film series, but that's just my opinion.