When In Sherlock Romes

In the past week I've seen two different movies. One of which I went into with no expectations (usually a good thing) and one of which I went into with a number of expectations (usually a bad thing). So much for expectations.

The first of the movies was "When In Rome" which was kind of promoted as a silly romantic comedy. And, beyond that, I knew pretty much nothing about it. Basically, a woman goes to Rome for her sister's wedding and, while there, out of spite removes 5 coins from a mystical fountain. She finds out, back in New York, that taking a man's coin out of the fountain means that he will be obsessed with her until she returns the coin to either the fountain or the man. Of course, since it's a romantic comedy, we find that one of the coins belongs to the guy she's just fallen for at the wedding. Will their love last once he gets his coin back? What ever will they do?

The second movie was the latest incarnation of "Sherlock Holmes." This one stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, and was directed by Guy Ritchie. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Downey, but I like Law. And I tend to enjoy Ritchie films -- except for the higher-than-average amount of violence there can be. I knew that it was a new imagining of the Holmes mythology, where Holmes is a modified action hero, and there's explosions and the whole bit. I was obviously expecting to have to get over a few hurdles to be able to enjoy it.

And here's the thing: I ended up enjoying the main characters in both of them, and the plots were perfectly fine (for the universes they inhabited, at least). The make or break point in each movie was the secondary characters.

In "Sherlock," the women in the main characters' lives were fully-rounded women with lives and opinions of their own. You watched them on the screen and knew that they had lives off the screen, as well. And you wanted to learn more about them -- and to see more of them. The members of the police force seemed like real people. Even the bad guy (and wow is he bad) has a backstory that you understand and can work with.

On the other hand, in "Rome," aside from the main character's family, the rest of the secondary characters were just caricatures. They were all played for stereotypes and laughs (which they didn't always get). And, unfortunately, a few of them were even played for laughs based in completely different movies (it's equally as confusing in the movie as it is in those sentences). I found myself wishing that the movie had been much less heavy-handed, and had actually taken itself seriously. In fact, I spent much of the movie recasting those secondary characters in my head. That's never a good sign.

So... Ratings...

"Sherlock Holmes": A-. Definitely a fun movie. Not happy with some of the re-imaginings of it that seemed to mess with the legend just for the heck of it, but the women made me want to see more.

"When in Rome": C-. It had such good potential. The two main characters were great. I wanted to see so much more of them -- and so much less of the other characters.