“By the end of the movie I was left wondering what I had just seen…”It was about 5:00 pm on Monday January 4th when I decided that I wanted to go and see Sherlock the Abominable Bride. Now some you may be thinking “What do you mean go and see it? It aired on tv!” to which I would reply that you raise a good point, but I was bored at the time and decided that I could go see Sherlock in a local theatre that was playing it for just one night. I thought that doing this would be a pleasant way to spend a monday evening, but boy was I wrong. 

Like I said, it was about 5pm when I decided I wanted to go and see the movie. Just for some backstory, I knew that it would be playing at that theatre, at that particular day, for about a month and a half, but I was too lazy to buy tickets in advance. So for about a month and a half I was toying with the idea in my head to go and see a Sherlock holiday special in a theatre. By the time I decided to actually go, both 7:00 showtimes were sold out. That, coupled with the fact that I was flat-broke, made fore a completely spirit breaking realization that I would not be able to watch Sherlock in theatres. Now back to 5pm, when I was sitting at my computer, realizing I had nothing better to do with my Monday night, so I checked the showtimes and saw that the 9:30 showtime was still open. Then I decided that I would make it my mission to see Sherlock in theatres.

I started to look for money. When I said I was flat-broke it wasn’t a hyperbole, I had absolutely no money to my name. I started racking my brain to try and come up with a few ‘Get moderately wealthy in an hour’ schemes. I decided that I could sell a copy of Assassin’s Creed that I had because it was still factory sealed and collecting dust. When I looked up the prices of that particular game, I saw that it was selling for about $15 so in the used market I figured I would get about $10. Knowing tickets are $10.99, I knew I would still come up short. I had a flash of brilliance. I would check the piggy bank that I hadn’t used for a good while. The gods were smiling upon me that day because inside the piggy bank was a lonely 2 dollar coin. By this time it is around 6:30, and I estimated I would have to leave in 30 minutes to give myself time to sell my video game and get to the theatre. I’m not sure exactly what, but something told me to check my bank account balance one my phone before I left. Lo and behold there was a staggering balance of $8.76. This really was a blessing because when I sold my video game, I was only given $5. So everything worked out in the end.

I arrived at the theatre at 8:30, bought my ticket, then proceeded to ask an employee what time the theatre would be open, knowing there was already a showing taking place. The employee told me that he would start letting people in at about 9. I looked around and saw that there were no available places to sit and wait for roughly 30 minutes, so I returned to my car. I sat in the car for 20 minutes and went back into the theatre at 8:50. Not wanting to look like an asshole by going up to the same employee again and asking him if I could go in yet, I stood awkwardly in front of the atm periodically checking my phone and glancing at the door hoping that anyone who saw me standing around would assume that I was waiting for someone. It wasn’t until a very loud couple came into the theatre that I realized, once again, my fear of talking to people fucked me over.

The time is now 8:55 and the aforementioned couple comes in and I hear them mention that the movie they are going to see is in theatre 2. I know that is the same theatre that Sherlock is playing in so I use this couple as Guinea pigs, waiting to see if they are let past the mighty ripper of tickets. As soon as they turn the corner and look down the hall that houses theatre 2 I hear one of them exclaim “Is that line for Sherlock?”. I thought to myself that maybe the employee let in 15 or 20 customers and there was a small line. I decided now was time to strike before it was too late. As I rounded the corner to hand my ticket to the man, my heart sank. I shit you not, The line for Sherlock started just behind the ticket ripper, on the right wall, stretched all the way to the end of the hall, went out an exit door on the right side of the hall, came back in an exit door on the left side of the hall, and was half way back toward the beginning of the hall again. Not only was this line insanely long, but it was also about 3 people wide. It was such a large congregation of people that I originally thought they had oversold tickets. This was my first sign of warning for the terrible experience to come.

When we were finally let into the theatre, I knew finding a seat would be too difficult as I like to sit at the front for extra leg room. When I get into the theatre, I notice that the seating is divided into two sections: The back, stadium seating section that everyone is accustomed to; and a front section that was still a fair distance away from the screen. I opted to sit in the back row of the front section, leaving the Wheelchair accessible chair open to the left of me. At this time, there were not many people sitting in the front section of the theatre, but the back section was filling up. It was then that an employee came into the theatre and let us know that the showing was sold out and we couldn’t leave gaps in our seating arrangement. This was sign #2 that my night was going to be shitty. I HATE people. especially when I have to sit next to them in movies. I could be sitting in between the pope and the president and I would still probably be pissed off. To my misfortune, a group of what I assume are college aged women sit next to me, filling up all 5 remaining seats. I have no problem with this initially because the woman sitting next to me is small and I think I can win in an ‘arm-nudge battle for the arm rest’. Then the movie starts.

The Sherlock special started with a nice clip of creator Steven Moffat walking us through the set, pointing out things that we may have otherwise missed. But as soon as the lights went out for this clip to start playing. The dumb cunt next to me and her dumb cunt friend take out their phones and start texting. I figure that they maybe just aren’t interests in the feature that is currently being shown and decide to ignore them for the time being. I realize now that it should have been a warning that these to wastes of space decided to take out their phones the moment the lights went down, but hindsight is 20/20. The next hour and 40 minutes were some of the most annoying of my life. When the actual movie started, not only did the entitled pricks keep texting, but they started talking to each other as well. I decided that it wasn’t worth the aggravation to tell these two dumb shits that a movie theatre is not a place to be social, so I moved to the (thankfully) empty wheelchair accessible seat beside me. I still have no idea why these two fucking idiots came to the movie that night. I can understand when two pretentious assholes want to talk during a movie, but when these women were texting, I witnessed them quickly look up at the screen whenever there was an audience reaction, showing me that they had no fucking idea what was going on. To spare you the details These fucking morons texted and talked throughout the entire film, and even toward the end of the film I noticed a man IN THE VERY FRONT ROW texting. I’m sure other people saw it as well, but nothing was said to any of the guilty parties.

Now, if anyone is still reading this and wonder my actually thoughts on the film they are as follows:

I felt perfectly content with this holiday special episode of Sherlock. Having started watching the episodes about 7 months ago, it was nice to finally be back in that world. I’ve always enjoyed Cumberbatch’s take on Sherlock, and he seemed to excel with the setting being in victorian times, as did Freeman. I’m still not a fan of Andrew Scott’s portrayal of Moriarty and that hasn’t changed in this special. The set design was phenomenal especially the set of Sherlock’s apartment, with many nods to the original Sherlock stories being present. The Camerawork and direction were as always great, except for this one transition where the entire picture rotated 360 degrees twice. That seemed like something a 7th grader would do on windows movie maker while editing a clip he made staring some action figures and his dog. In other words, it was amateur and it took me right out of the move. There were many nods to the series such as Sherlock and Watson meeting for the first time again, and many recurring characters from the television show we all know and love. We later find out that is because this whole story is taking place in Sherlock’s head while he is on a lot of drugs. This is where the story lost me. I was thoroughly enjoying the actual story of the abominable bride, and then that gets interrupted with a shot of Sherlock on a plane, where we last saw him. The story then delves into this bullshit Inception-like ‘Is it a dream or isn’t it?’. That pissed me off. By the end of the movie I was left wondering what the fuck I had just seen. Sherlock decides that he would use the case of the abominable bride to figure out if Moriarty is still alive, but the case of the abominable bride never really comes to a conclusion. Sherlock discovers that the abominable bride is actually a cult or something comprised of women that like to dress up as zombies and scare the shit out of men. There are then a few scenes in which you are not sure if it is a drug induced dream or not, and then the story ends with Sherlock stating that he knows Moriarty is dead. It’s never explicitly explained how he knows this or how Moriarty is still doing shit if he is dead, but based on the case Sherlock “solved” I can only assume that there is a cult comprised of women that enjoy dressing up as Moriarty to torment Sherlock Holmes.

I give this movie a  C (3/5)