Thoughts on "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" (2011)

The production design on Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows", from the costume department to the art direction to Hans Zimmer's now-familiar score is, I must say, first-rate stuff - eye-popping, transportive, even soothing in its period detail, the sawdust in the air, the splintering of wood, the slush of mud in the street, etc.
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But beyond the film's rapturous facade, its welcoming, grimy-yet-lovely recreations, is the sneaking, inevitable feeling of weariness. Weariness in the film's aimless set-pieces, its over-plotting, its bloated runtime, its mumbling, shuffling gape from scene-to-scene, from clue-to-clue. 
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And in some way I almost respect and acknowledge Ritchie and his team for keeping the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle formula of slow clue accumulation followed by after-the-fact exposition and a climactic resolution, discovery and explanation of these facts, but after two films, the only resounding feeling to be gained from these middling, half-curious action-mystery hybrids is one of faint exhaustion. 
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I'm partly blaming the film's writers, who fail to justify their unruly length and roundabout storytelling and partly blaming Ritchie, who, although bizarrely flexing his slow-motion, camera-mount muscles during a second-half treeline escape, fails to wring tension or humor out of scenes that should otherwise bring nothing but. [C+]