Or, the summary should perhaps more accurately read, "A richness of embarrassments." The script is embarrassing. The storyline is embarrassing. The plot is embarrassing. The direction is embarrassing. The characterizations of Holmes & Watson are embarrassing, although not totally the actors' faults. James D'Arcy's Holmes is duly intense and focused, and might have shone if given a script less stupid; as it is, he's just embarrassing. Vincent Donofrio's fake accent and surprisingly crappy acting are both embarrassing. Gabrielle Anwar's character's name (Rebecca Doyle) is embarrassing. The reporter's hair is embarrassing. Inspector Lestrade is embarrassing (but then, he pretty much always is). The heavily armed London Bobby SWAT team is embarrassing. The gratuitous sex scene is embarrassing. Holmes as a leering lecher is embarrassing. The hackneyed Victorian London drug scene scenes are embarrassing. The climax is embarrassing. The closing scene is more embarrassing than the opening was. In fact, about an hour & a quarter in Inspector Lestrade himself gives this film its best one-line review: "This is a complete waste of time and resources." Everyone involved in this production who retains any self-respect whatsoever should be thoroughly embarrassed. The violence done the Canon here, the complete disregard for fidelity to the original material, is more than embarrassing, it is a crime worthy of Moriarity himself. I could go on, but now I'm too embarrassed to have been caught watching it . . .
