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Holmes & Watson | 2018 | PG-13 | – 4.5.5

content-ratingsWhy is “Holmes & Watson” rated PG-13? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “crude sexual material, some violence, language and drug references.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes sexual innuendo and implied sex, cleavage, a nude man obscured with cake frosting and nudity depicted in objects, several fight scenes and accidental deaths by gunshot and stabbing with no blood evident, some implied drug use, and at least 1 F-word. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.”


Famous detective Sherlock Holmes (Will Ferrell) and Dr. John Watson (John C. Reilly) are called to protect the Queen of England (Pam Ferris) from arch villain Professor Moriarty (Ralph Fiennes) after they encounter a dead body carrying an ominous note in a birthday cake. Also with Rebecca Hall, Lauren Lapkus, Kelly Macdonald, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan. Directed by Etan Cohen. [Running Time: 1:30]

Holmes & Watson SEX/NUDITY 4

 – We see a cartoon postcard drawing of a man and a woman in frontal nudity from the waist up (drawn breasts and chest are visible). A cartoon graphic shows a penis as a glowing arrow and the lighted outline of a penis. A clay statue on a table displays an exaggeratedly large penis.
 Several women wear deeply cut necklines in long dresses (we see significant cleavage). A woman wears something like a one-piece bathing suit made of dress material in a boxing ring, revealing bare legs to the upper thighs, as well as cleavage. A woman wears a corset and long bloomers as she lies across the laps of five men (implying prostitution). A man’s dream sequence shows him and a woman playing “strip chess”; she removes her blouse to show her corset and cleavage and he removes his shirt, snaps his suspenders against his bare chest and the dream ends abruptly when another shirtless man enters the dream. A dead man falls out of a cake (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) and appears nude from the exposed navel to his head, all smeared in frosting.
 A man and a woman come out of a bedroom clothed but disheveled, implying sex. A corpse is shown on a table (no genitals are visible) as a man and a woman wash their hands while staring at each other, wipe down the corpse, rub the body’s nipples briefly, hold hands together as they smile and the scene ends. A man and a woman kiss briefly in two scenes and hug and kiss for several seconds in two other scenes. A man flirts with a woman in several scenes, giggling, smiling, and trying to hold her hand. A young boy is blindfolded and told he will kiss a little girl, but he kisses the hind end of a donkey and cries.
 Two characters make several veiled references to masturbation (a man says he will never touch himself again). A comment is made about a sexually transmitted disease.
 A man unzips his pants (we hear the zip) and below the frame apparently pulls his genitals out and lays them on a telegraph operator’s desk; he tells the operator to send a picture of them to a woman.

Holmes & Watson VIOLENCE/GORE 5

 - A man stabs another man in the shoulder (no blood is seen), and another man pulls out the knife and throws it into the side of another man, who falls, sweats, mutters and dies (there's no blood). A man shoots a handgun several times in the air inside a courtroom and people gasp as a presumably dead man falls out of the balcony in the background, landing with a thud.
 A man gives another man poison and watches as the victim gags, develops a rash at the mouth, spits white foam, groans, thrashes, shouts, and leaks liquid from his nipples to soak his shirt; the first man says that he has an antidote and takes the man off-screen (the victim is seen with a small rash on his lips in the next scene).
 A man cuts a large cake, blood flows out of it (he thinks it's jam), he splits the cake with an axe and finds a body (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details); the man later eats a piece of cake as another man says there was a corpse in the cake and the first man spits it out (we see it fall below the frame). In a man's imagination we see a ship exploding and the action rewinds to show the fire sucked back into the ship as we see that a bomb is hidden inside a kettle drum; a man runs through a reception area, knocking down men and women, he digs out the bomb, throws it through a porthole to shatter the glass and into a rowboat, where a woman curses, the camera cuts away and we hear an explosion off-screen.
 A man accidentally hits a woman on the head with a large camera and says he killed her; he and another man plan to shove her down the toilet, but drop her and she hits her head on a door frame, they then stuff her into a trunk and punch her buttocks to make them fit (to no avail), and they lay her on a table and get a large saw as she awakens and leaves. A man hits another man on the head with a croquet mallet and a woman says the muttering victim is concussed.
 A huge man fights a smaller man, who imagines punching the larger man in the stomach, poking him in the eyes, flipping his ear, and pulling him into a body throw by the beard to win; in reality, the huge man throws the smaller man over the side of the ring after punching a male audience member unconscious and another man enters the ring and throws his pipe at the large man, but the man thrown over the side returns with a folding chair and beats the large man unconscious with it. Children carry clubs through a street and join two women that fire handguns as the children hit sailors with the clubs; the camera moves back to briefly show a street fight and shouting, but no blood or injuries. A young boy is attacked by a large group of children who punch him. A small boy and a girl fight in a pub where people are betting on the fight: we see punches and both children falling down. A few men spar lightly in a ring in a gym.
 Two men slap each other's faces to kill a mosquito, graduate to punches, and then strike each other with cricket bats; a strike barely touches a hive of killer bees and we see the dead mosquito as bees swarm out and the men jump out a window and fall to the pavement below the frame with a thud. A woman takes a man to a ship and ties him to a large gear in the engine room where they shout at each other as the gear moves a couple of times and another man enters; the captive screams for him to get him off the gear and says he will never touch himself again.
 A group of homeless children argue with a man. Two men argue several times in different scenes and shout loudly in one scene. A woman argues with a man in several scenes. Two men shout for their housekeeper and call her names very loudly for several seconds.
 A girl takes a boy's turtle and hurls it into the air off-screen (we see the turtle held in a cloth sling in a wooden frame to recover with no blood shown). Five policemen throw a man into a dark prison cell after he is wrongly accused of murder; a headline and two street signs announce that a man will be hanged in public and we see dogs tear apart a canvas dummy under a gallows.
 A man in a gym has an artificial arm with a large tattoo needle for a hand. Two men eat large onions as if they were apples; a man and a woman eat large onions the same way and pieces of onion fall out of the woman's mouth. A woman washes her face like a cat, picks up knives, and puts them between her fingers to look like claws as she makes a fierce face. A man vomits into a large trash can three times and gags without vomiting twice more (we see brownish goo). A man wipes horse dung over another man's coat. Two men in a pub urinate against a staircase and we hear the streams as we see a cartoon graphic of yellow glowing urine falling into pools on a floor and a shoe. A man tosses two bottles of urine onto the floor below the frame and we hear a thud.

Holmes & Watson LANGUAGE 5

 - At least 1 F-word, 5 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 19 mild obscenities, name-calling (stupid, new kid, idiot, fool, fake news, murderer, absurd, oaf, drunken, hairy old whores, brain dead bag of bones, vaporous fainting ninny, cripple, criminal, mountain of flesh, baby queer, wonky, bag of rubbish, bag of tissue), exclamations (horseradish, dash it all, shut-up, quiet), 8 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Oh God, My God, By God, Good God, Dear God, God Save The Queen). | profanity glossary |

Holmes & Watson SUBSTANCE USE

 - A man holds up and shakes a vial of white powder in close-up (he calls it something like "tay-tay") and the camera cuts to him and another man moving very fast and jumping around (cocaine use is implied). Men and women at a party hold very large glasses of champagne and two men sip from their glasses as the scene ends, many men and women hold tall glasses of champagne on a ship (no one is shown drinking), many men and women in a pub hold beer in metal mugs, and men and women in a bar sip beer from glass mugs and dance. Four men in a gym smoke cigarettes in a "healthy smoking" area, two men smoke pipes in a men's club, and a man smokes a pipe on the street.

Holmes & Watson DISCUSSION TOPICS

 - Crime, murder, death, bullying, violence, revenge, women's rights, problem solving, mind reading, friendship, loyalty, making amends, love.

Holmes & Watson MESSAGE

 - Teamwork saved the Queen of England from murder and taught two men the meaning of love.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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