The year was 1994, the advent of DVD was still a few years off. Laserdiscs were mainly used for films in classrooms, and the old video store down the street was STILL clutching to its 80’s look of neon colors, fluorescent signs and black and white striped trim. In six years it would be sold and changed dramatically. But in 1994, I walked down from my house and found this little gem. I knew how much my mother loved Sherlock Holmes, and I was a big fan of Michael Caine’s, ever since I had seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. (which came out the same year as this film, incidentally, 1989).
After I brought it back home, and we watched it, I fell in love with it. The pure irony, the intellectual humor, the idiotic slapstick; every time we’d watch it it would be the most fun you could spend in two hours, it would get funnier every time. Pure escapism at its best.
Michael Caine plays the out-of-work actor Reginald Kincaid as Sherlock Holmes and Ben Kingsley plays the true genius behind the mysteries, Watson. As the rethought storyline goes, Watson hires Reginald Kincaid to play Holmes, line for line, after Watson’s first dally into writing mysteries has become a huge success. What he didn’t gamble on was an alcoholic womanizing gambling idiot. We pick up the story as Moriarty has come back and as Holmes starts to seek his independence from Watson. Watson, fed up with Holmes’ crap, is happy to oblige.
The more you watch it, the more jokes seem to jump out at you. We have actually fallen out of chairs watching this. Whether it be the “integrity of English literature” line or the “he KNOWS you’re an idiot,” its good times had by all.
I went back to the video store and over the next year, we rented the movie four times. Curious of the movie’s popularity, I asked the clerk how often the movie had been rented. He told me that it had been rented six times, five of them by us. I asked if I could buy the movie and they were happy to. We’ve shown the movie to people over the years, all of them have loved it, and I can’t imagine why such a hilarious, witty film can remain so obscure.
Absurdist Noir 