I love Rathbone and all the flac his Holmes gets should be directed at a) the war office and b) Nigel Bruce, who also only did his job.
But I must say that two other great actors were in a previous travesty, ie. Richard Roxburgh as a "modernised" Holmes, and his stick fighting, drug taking ON THE JOB and homocidal mistakes, all of which replace actual skills and flaws the "real" Holmes had for no reason, look a bit like the blueprint for this?