Downey Rides Again

Though he still has two movies on deck (August's Tropic Thunder and November's The Soloist), a lot of Hollywood watchers have been waiting to see what Robert Downey Jr. would pick as his next project now that Iron Man's officially rocketed him back to his deserving spot on the A-list. Well, he's made his choice. According to Variety, he'll star as the titular character in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. Say it with me now - hrm.

There's a lot of factors to give one pause. The project is based as much on the comics series as Doyle's books. It might go head to head at the box office with another recently greenlit Sherlock film starring Sascha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell. (No, really.) It's being directed by Guy Ritchie, who by the time shooting rolls around might be up to his ass in alligators with a Madonna divorce imbroglio. Downey's British accent was at times dodgy in 1995's Restoration. And yet? I'm optimistic.

Downey has good taste in movies. He hasn't really been in anything wretched, and on the few occasions he's ended up in a stinker, well, he has enough charm and charisma to sell dildos to nuns, so the experience is still enjoyable. (I mean the movie experience, not the nuns+chucks experience.) He apparently has exacting standards when it comes to scripts, and now he has regained the clout necessary to exercise said exacting standards, so I assume the Sherlock script doesn't blow. And Guy Ritchie didn't always suck - remember Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? So yeah, this isn't the first movie I would have pegged Downey signing on for with his newly re-minted success, but his movie choices have always been eccentric and varied, and he's always knocked it out of the park. It'll do, 'til Iron Man 2 comes out.