When we go to the movies, I prefer to laugh. I will sneak a chick flick in on occasion and maybe an action movie here and there, but I need more than a pretty woman and explosions to make me want to plunk down my money at the theater.

So I naturally worried a little when I heard there was a Sherlock Holmes movie afoot. My wife loves to read mysteries and would surely want to go. If it turned out to be a period piece, I would have just encouraged her to go with a friend. Then I saw the trailer and the explosions and had another moment of pause. Could I really enjoy a mystery action flick based in Victorian London?

Thanks to Robert Downey, Jr., I know I can.

A quick trip around the web will show that not everyone enjoyed the Holmes movie like we did, but I think the fact that they didn’t piss off someone like me (never read Holmes) and Maria (has pretty much read it all) shows that the film can’t be as bad as some want to say.

I know explosions and buff/smart/sassy heroes are in vogue, but this transition may have been the only way to make the movie a real success. If you want bookish or upper-crust Holmes, there are probably plenty of other versions out there to watch. So they mixed in a little bit of bare-knuckles boxing, a quick wit and an attention to detail surpassed by none. I think only Downey could have pulled it off.

They made the film even stronger by casting Jude Law as Watson and giving him a pretty interesting character. Having the two play buddies tied together by this curiosity helped make the story more palatable. You sensed a partnership, something which will be crucial to make the inevitable sequel work.

I have read others complain about the simplicity of the plot or the lack of development of secondary characters, but that stuff doesn’t bother me because they managed to make me laugh while blowing some stuff up and kept me from looking at my watch for most of the two hours. That’s all I need in a movie.