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Sherlock Holmes And The Great Escape DVD Review

“Sherlock Holmes And The Great Escape” offers up a new take on the classic character.

Based on the books by Lai Ho, “Sherlock Holmes And The Great Escape” (AKA “The Great Detective Sherlock Holmes- The Greatest Jail Breaker”) is a Chinese animated feature film set in an animated animal world where Sherlock Holmes is a dog and Warson a cat. The story concerns a father/thief (White Storm AkA Mack) that is robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Sherlock, Watson and 2 Detectives are trying to track down and eventually catch him. Mack is in prison for 4 years, but escapes leaving Sherlock and co. to try to find him again. Problems worsen when another prisoner escapes (the villainous Scarface) who has his own vendetta against Mack.

Directed by Toe Yuen and Matthew Chow, “Sherlock Holmes And The Great Escape” is an adaptation of a book series not based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s clearly designed to introduce the character to a younger generation and that’s perfectly respectable. On top of that, it’s good to see new stories and not just retreads of old ones. At the same time, this original story isn’t the best. While it was interesting to see Sherlock struggling with some morality issues about arresting Mack in front of his daughter and what not, the plot is pretty basic and contains a few too many dopey humor moments. The villain angle with Scarface also didn’t have enough depth to it and felt like a shoehorned conflict for the second half of the movie. 

The animation work by Simage Animation is well done from start to finish. The character models are impressive and the environments are noticeably detailed.

Video/Audio:

Presentation: 1.85:1. How does it look? The animation looks sharp here in standard definition. 

Audio Tracks: Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0. How does it sound? The English dub is sufficient but it would have been nice to get the original language track too.

The lone extra is a theatrical trailer.

March 20, 2021 - Posted by nicklyons1 | DVD review | Animated Movie, Sherlock Holmes And The Great Escape DVD Review