I saw the movie Sherlock Holmes the other day. The new one, with Robert Downey Jr. That sound you hear is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spinning in his grave (to this day, even though the movie came out in 2009).

This movie was so dumb. It physically pained me that they just had to attach the name “Sherlock Holmes” to this otherwise completely unrelated action movie. Seriously, there was nothing in this movie that had anything to do with the Sherlock Holmes mythology as it were; they could have just called it, “Generic Steampunk Action Movie!” and it wouldn’t have changed anything. So I can only assume they invoked Sherlock Holmes to tap into a built-in audience.

So my problems with it are mostly Sherlock Holmes-based. Other than that, it was just sort of your average mindless action movie that just happens to be set in Victorian England. The characters are goofy, the situation is goofy, the whole movie is just generally sort of goofy. (In case you were wondering, Sherlock Holmes is an amazing hand-to-hand fighter who can beat up anybody because he’s so much smarter than everyone!)

But here’s the question: am I just becoming snobby in my old age? Or are movies really just getting worse as time goes on? I tend to think it is a little of both, but probably the former more than the latter. People have probably always been declaring the movie industry is at rock bottom, since right about the dawn of the movie industry.

It seems to me that when I was a kid, I generally liked every movie I saw, more or less. Now it seems like I generally dislike every movie I see. The default has flipped. I think there’s every chance that I probably would have liked this movie when I was a kid. And to be fair, the movie probably wasn’t really marketed at me.

So I don’t really know if it’s just me, or what. What do you think?