Getting right to it: I loved this movie! It's sheer entertainment--a visual and performance-rich delight. Unlike the dozens upon dozens of Holmes pastiches foisted on us over the years, this fine film is a worthy addendum to the Sherlockian canon. Oh, I know. I hear you, you sour-puss, Baker Street Irregular carpers. "Downey plays Holmes like an ADD adolescent," you'll say. "Watson is an obsessive compulsive brute and Irene Adler is given far more play than she deserves. Sniff, sniff, snort snort, nothing like the Rathbone/Bruce classics, I daresay."

Hey purists: get over it! This is, by far, the best Holmes film I've ever seen. It far surpasses the Rathbone/Bruce potboilers and is even better than "Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother." It's clever, amusing, exciting, suspenseful, and holds hope for a series of sequels. See this one, ARers, see this one.