AVATAR vs. SHERLOCK HOLMES - Is it elementary my dear Watson?

There's only so many days I can use the snow as my excuse for not seeing Avatar, and I know I need to get my ass in gear soon before the advent of the New Year will make any kind of review obsolete. That's if it isn't already too late. If nothing else, my Top Ten List of 2009 will be redundant without a mention of such a widely acclaimed movie with a $300 million budget from James Cameron, right? I should see it for that reason alone, even if "the must see" factor couldn't persuade me to hand over my hard-earned money for another Harry Potter borefest, this year's Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich spectacles and the ludcricous looking Twilight: New Moon. Realisation smacked me harder than that iron that hit Marv in Home Alone (odd reference I know, but I've been in a Christmas movie marathon mood this week) yesterday and I think I should probably share this with you guys. During a festive, slightly merry conversation with one of my closest friends, who by the way is dying to see the movie, the truth behind my Avatar avoidence became clear. When he mentioned his surprise that the biggest film buff he knows, the guy who is usually so enthusastic about seeing just about anything, is not at all interested (at worst) or (at best), has HUGE trepidiations about seeing such a well received blockbuster, my only answer I could muster was that I was afraid of the movie. It's true readers, and it's probably been evident in every write-up of Avatar that I've put together this year. I am terrified of seeing Avatar.

Truth is, I'm not particularly one who gets excited about alien movies and there has to be a big humane entry point for me to dig any fantasy/sci-fi spectacle. Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, or Ellen Ripley in Alien - even though the latter is more of a horror movie in actuality. The alien inconsequential, and ALMOST, a MacGuffin - if you really think about it. I honestly think that I'm terrified of Avatar, really. I'm terrified that after 90 minutes, I will become rigor mortis. I will want to leave the theatre out of shear boredom. It's stupid I know, and I will probably geek out as soon as I lay my opens upon it, but even with the kind of reviews I was previously convinced would make me see it, I can't pull myself round to make the trip. I worry too about the deeper complications about not liking Avatar. Will it mean I'm not down with where the future of film is heading? Will it mean I'm a cultural non-entity and out of touch? Am I just not cool if I don't like it and irrelevant, untrustworthy and binnable as a film critic? These deeper underlying questions keep me awake at night. I think I can forsee what's going to happen tonight when I brave it out to the cinema. I get out of my car. I walk to the box office booth where the spotty, tired looking clerk gives me a vague look of recognition. I will see the black board behind him with bright, white letters.

AVATAR (161 minutes) SHERLOCK HOLMES (128 minutes)

"Two tickets for the Sherlock Holmes movie please". It will happen, no matter how much I try and convince myself to see Avatar. Am I a failure? And do I not learn from my own mistakes? Jeez. I really don't know what to do. Here's what the critics are saying for Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, out today... A.O. Scott of the New York Times...

Of course intelligence has never ranked high among either Mr. Ritchie€™s interests or his attributes as a filmmaker. His primary desire, most successfully realized early in his directing career, in €œLock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels€ and €œSnatch,€ has always been to be cool: to make cool movies about cool guys with cool stuff. Yes, €œSherlock Holmes€ is kind of cool. But that€™s not really a compliment. The visual style €” a smoky, greasy, steam-punk rendering of Victorian London, full of soot and guts and bad teeth and period clothes €” shows some undeniable flair. And so do the kinetic chases and scrapes that lead us through the city, as Holmes and his pal Watson (Jude Law) scramble to unravel a conspiracy so diabolical that it fails to be interesting. Best of all is the banter between Mr. Downey and Mr. Law, who is looser and more mischievous than he€™s allowed himself to be in quite some time. The mustache suits him.

The new, modernized Holmes/Watson relationship is brought up in just about every review of the picture and it's become a fascinating talking point. Empire's William Thomas calls it a Butch/Sundance dynamic, Kenneth Turan in The L.A. Times calls them "The Odd Couple";

As opposed to the bumbler of previous film versions, Watson's been made into a handsome man of action, but he's also been placed in a relationship with Holmes that feels too much like "The Odd Couple." With their connection damaged by Watson's decision to move out and get married, the two men bicker almost ceaselessly over who left the stove on and who should be wearing what.

AICN's Capone calls Sherlock Holmes...

SHERLOCK HOLMES is Guy Ritchie's superhero movie, with Holmes (Robert Downey Jr. absolutely devours Arthur Conan Doyle's creation) as a version of Batman that uses his brains as his primary weapon (followed closely with some fairly formidable fists). It also seems to help that both Holmes and Batman are mentally unstable creatures. And not that the plot of the film isn't impressive on a mass-destruction scope, but it's almost secondary compared to watching Holmes and his heterosexual life partner Dr. John Watson (Jude Law, in what might be his best work to date) outfit and outfight their enemies and those who appear to be friends but are actually just more enemies. I also love how the plot fully embraces the time period and place. The idea of a device that can wirelessly trigger a bomb nearly confounds our heroes. The final battle takes place on an in-progress bridge construction of a structure that usually acts as nothing but background in other London-set films.

Roger Ebert and Todd McCarthy both liked it the less they related to it as a Sherlock Holmes picture but Drew McWeeney, who should know having played Moriarty for 12 years over at AICN, said it was more familiar to the pulp action roots of Holmes than you might immediately realise. Michael Phillips, calls it a "drag" to see Holmes Watson turn "into a couple of garden-variety thugs". His is the biggest pan of the movie online closely followed by Kirk Honeycutt at The Hollywood Reporter.