Young Sherlock Holmes movie review (1985)

"Young Sherlock Holmes" suggests that Holmes and Watson met in their middle teens, at an English public school, and that Holmes solved his first case at about the same time. This theory involves a rewriting of their historic first meeting, but the movie suggests that it set a pattern for many more meetings to come: Watson blunders into the orbit of the supercilious Holmes, who casually inspects him and uses a few elementary clues to tell him everything about himself.

The school they attend is one of those havens of eccentricity that have been celebrated in English fiction since time immemorial. It is run by Rathe (Anthony Higgins), a bright young man, but it is also inhabited by old professor Waxflatter (Nigel Stock), a retired don who hopes to invent the first airplane and who regularly launches unsuccessful flights from the tops of school buildings.

Holmes and Watson look, as schoolboys, like younger versions of the men they would someday become. Holmes (Nicholas Rowe) is tall, slender and taciturn, and Watson (Alan Cox) is short and round and nearsighted. Watson is in every sense the "new boy," always available to run an errand for the adored Holmes, to provide a cheering section, and to chronicle the great man's adventures.

The plot of "Young Sherlock Holmes" seems constructed out of odds and ends of several stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. For unknown reasons, several men with no apparent connection to one another die under mysterious circumstances. To Watson's amazement, Holmes finds the missing connection, determines that they have died while hallucinating, identifies the hallucinatory drug and its means of attack, and arrives at a likely suspect.

If these story elements seem typical of Conan Doyle, there is also a lot in this movie that can be traced directly to the work of Steven Spielberg, the executive producer. The teenage heroes, for example, are not only inspired by Holmes and Watson, but are cousins of the young characters in "The Goonies." The fascination with lighter-than-air flight leads to a closing scene that reminded me of "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial." And the villain's secret temple, with its ritual of human sacrifice, was not unlike scenes in both the Indiana Jones movies.

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