Thanks to the BBC's habit of regularly screening his series of low budget 1940s thrillers I got hooked at an early age on Rathbone as the great detective and Nigel Bruce as his bumbling sidekick Dr Watson.
Although the films bore little relation to the original source material (especially after Universal took over the franchise in 1942) they became the yardstick against which I measured all other incarnations of the famous private detective.
In this context I should have hated director Guy Ritchie's action oriented punk-rock take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation at first sight.
But it kind of works.
Jude Law as the faithful Dr Watson is as far removed from Nigel Bruce's idiotic old fogey as it's possible to get. This Watson is almost as sharp but not quite, and quick to exasperation over Holmes' idiosyncratic behaviour.
Despite the pre-release hype over Downey's claim that he'd injected an element of homoeroticism in their relationship, the reality is that both men are firmly attached to other women. Watson's about to get engaged to an attractive and rather proper young governess while Holmes has unfinished business with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), an alluring and dangerous former girlfriend who reappears to seduce and doublecross him.
Director Ritchie further stamps his mark on the storytelling with copious use of the jumpcut. It's like watching one of those youth targeted shows on cable tv where the picture continually cuts between different angles on the assumption that it's the only way to hold the interest of its short-attention-span-afflicted audience.
What's weird is that Ritchie then abandons this approach halfway into the film in favour of a less jagged, more straightforward style, presumably in the belief that now he's got our full attention he can hold it without further need of visual gimmicks.
The story, about a renegade Lord's attempt to take over the government of Victorian Britain using black magic, takes an awful long time to tell and the action really starts to drag in the second half. It takes Downey over 2 hours to solve a case that Rathbone would have wrapped up in 70 minutes.
On the plus side Downey makes Holmes his own. He even made me forget about Rathbone for a while, and it's interesting to see a star of Law's stature playing a sidekick and doing it so effectively. While all actors have an ego Law must have checked his at the door because he gives Downey the space to perform without worrying about being overshadowed.
The end result is a superior class of blockbuster. It's reasonably enjoyable if not particularly memorable and having seen it once I have no desire to ever see it again.
Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, I can watch over and over again.
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