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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Blatant rubbish, January 3, 2005
This review is from: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes - The Eligible Bachelor [VHS] (VHS Tape)
I am giving this film an extra star out of respect for actors Brett and Hardwicke, and for a few of the looney, arty camera shots that are used to conjure a bizarre tone for this overlong "Sherlock Holmes" story. However, there is good bizarre and there is bad bizarre. Good bizarre, as in other Brett/Holmes films such as "Wisteria Lodge" and "The Golden Pince-Nez," use unusual cinematography to add to the story's fun rather than distract from it. Bad bizarre, such as this mess, has no fun in it to begin with, and falls back on weird, disturbing images to compensate. For many years Jeremy Brett played the great sleuth with neurotic panache in well-made, tight, amusing films that stayed very close to the Conan Doyle stories on which they were made. Unfortunately, in Brett's declining years they put this fine actor in three stinkers ("The Master Blackmailer," "The Last Vampyre," and this, the worst of the lot) that took perfectly good Doyle stories and tried to drag them out to two hour epics by padding them with a lot of extra crap by modern screenwriters, all of whom for some reason decided that late Victorian London should be shown as an extremely squalid place filled with cackling hags, drunks, weird spectacled psychotics, suicidal gays, and Holmes himself going to pieces, sobbing and simpering most unlike the Holmes we all know and love. In keeping with the style of many television films of this era, this one seems jumpy, quick-cut, and random. After several scenes that each last all of five seconds, I begin to wonder where on earth the art of storytelling has gone. This overwrought bummer of a movie is best forgotten, and those wishing to enjoy a great Sherlock Holmes mystery might best go and watch "The Sign of Four," another long, bizarre story that has all the good qualities this one lacks: humor, plot, faithfulness to Doyle, fine production, and a great sleuth.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Questionable Use of Great Talent, August 6, 2010
We watched this movie before reading any of the reviews and came to a very similar conclusion with most of them. This was a choppy, disjointed movie that left one wondering; "what was that all about?" It presented a version of Holmes that was too over-the-top for me to enjoy.
As some have pointed out the one hour episodes aired on "Mystery Theater" all seem to maintain a crisp focus which this movie lacked. The over-long section on Holmes dreams definitely looked like filler to use up more time; which to me was time wasted.
At the end, efforts were made to tie all of the loose ends together and as far as I recall they were pretty much eventually explained.
I'm sure I will not watch this one again and would strongly suggest if anyone is curious about this movie, rent it first and see what you think before making a purchase decision.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly Eligible FIlm!, October 31, 2004
Although one appreciates most of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series for its faithful evocation of the ACD stories, this hugely expanded and utterly loose adaptation of 'The Noble Bachelor' (surely one of the lesser adventures as even the purists must admit) scores as a weird, mostly brilliant and vastly improved version of the original tale.
To the flimsy story of the American bride-to-be of a nobleman, who goes suddenly missing on her wedding, we are given a Holmes who is ill and suffering from a singular grotesque dream that repeatedly plagues him, and a nobleman who may not be quite as noble. In this story the director has actually taken advantage of Brett's bloated and haggard frame to give us a haunted, beleaguered Holmes who must pursue a case if only to keep off his own demons. The story is rich with interestingly flawed characters that function as more than the usual mouthpiece of information. Even old Mrs. Hudson is given more depth with an affectionate glance at her quasi-matronly relationship with Holmes.
The film has been crafted with great visual flair, noticeably more than the short episodes of the series. Holmes' hallucination and his attempt to transcribe it into sketches make for some awesome viewing. There's a very stylish use of color and lighting (DoP David Odd), and the camera movements and cutting are often eye-catching. It's really the most 'cinematic' of all the Brett-Holmes series I've so far seen.
Some people may not like it as much since Holmes is not here the imperturbable sleuth, and most of the story moves along without him playing a very active role. A few scenes are contrived to the limits of credibility. But I thought it was all the same a very interesting and visually ravishing attempt to stage an originally mediocre story.
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