Yes that film was awful- they took an individual who was 'very warm and friendly'[1] and turned him into the prototypical savant nerd (Sheldon Cooper, Sherlock Holmes)
There is a certain vibe to many of his performances but if you consider that he even played (in the film not the book) a gay man in roughly the same time period in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a performance in which he is still a little bit cumberbatch-y for a brief moment but generally warm and humorous, there's more to it than that.