Will Ferrell is one of those comedic actors that you either love or hate. For years he had a long string of hits, but these days there are some hits and misses. Two of his big hits Step Brothers and Talladega Nights teamed him up with the always great John C. Reilly who is on a high right now with praise for his film Stan and Ollie as well as Ralph Breaks The Internet. Now they are teaming up with Get Hard director Etan Cohen for their Sherlock Holmes comedy Holmes & Watson, but does it offer up the laughs or will it be more of a mystery that no one cares about?

 

Holmes & Watson follows Detective Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson who join forces to investigate a murder at Buckingham Palace. They soon learn that they have only four days to solve the case, or the queen will become the next victim. This movie was reportedly plagued with distribution issues which is a surprise with such a great cast including Ralph Fiennes, Rebecca Hall, Kelly MacDonald, Lauren Lapkus, but after seeing it you can see why, sort of. This is far from a great movie, but there are some laughs to be had but sadly it misses more than it hits.

 

The simple idea here is perfect and I admit that Ferrell and Reilly together are the perfect combination, but the overall pacing and story direction is a mess. Everything here feels like just set ups for another joke as opposed to an actual story. Sure there is the murder mystery element that isn’t overly hard to solve, but with jokes that are good and bad it made for an unbalanced film that is not surprising doesn’t connect with most people. Despite some of the other reviews I did not hate this movie and actually laughed quite a bit but with every laugh came another element that fell flat. There is some great banter between Ferrell and Reilly that I found fun to watch, but the lack of actual film structure didn’t help it to get any better.

 

I was hoping for so much more with this film as I am still a big fan of them both and love the ridiculous comedy it was using, but in the end it just missed more than worked. Every scene felt more like skits that were all slapped together to try and create a bigger film. There was a fun film here and while I found it funny at times and it is a great direction for a comedy, but in the end it just doesn’t have what it needed to be a film worthy of the Holmes legacy funny or otherwise.

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In addition to this film this release offers up bonus content including deleted scenes, featurettes and more. Get on the case with the greatest bumbling detective of all time when Holmes & Watson hits available now on digital and then on Blu-ray and DVD on April 9th from Sony Home Entertainment.