PG-13 | 1 h 49 min | Mystery, Adventure | 1985
A preface text clarifies that this film’s story is “original and is not specifically based on the exploits of Sherlock Holmes as described in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” If you’re a Holmes fan, that shouldn’t deter you. Screenwriter Chris Columbus gives Doyle’s beloved characters fun backstories, all thoroughly enjoyable if you temper expectations. They’re targeted at late 20th-century, late teen, and young adult audiences. Don’t look for gravitas!
Young Sherlock Holmes (Nicholas Rowe), a star student at school in Victorian London, expert at logic, math equations, and solving riddles, aspires to a crime-solving career. He meets a younger John Watson (Alan Cox), who has his eye on becoming a doctor, but is drawn to Holmes’s passion for adventure.
The otherwise cerebral Holmes has his eye on pretty Elizabeth (Sophie Ward), an orphan, who lives with her genial uncle, eccentric inventor, Rupert Waxflatter (Nigel Stock). Waxflatter is also Holmes’s intellectual mentor. So, the three teens become thick friends.
Holmes has spent considerable time in Scotland Yard Detective Lestrade’s (Roger Ashton-Griffiths) archives, researching human behavior and testing his powers of deduction. So, when three men, including Waxflatter, die mysteriously after sudden hallucinations, Holmes takes his suspicions of foul play to Lestrade. The policeman dismisses them as “playpen crime” theories of a schoolboy. But, as Holmes reminds Watson, “The deductive mind never rests.” Soon, the game is truly afoot.
Holmes, Watson, and Elizabeth track down a caped, hooded figure in London’s dark streets, after finding an exotic hand-carved blowpipe at the scene of the crime. That leads them to an ancient sect, which is up to no good, but is operating right in the heart of London. Holmes discovers that three victims are part of a group of six men targeted by the sect. Will he uncover the binding tie between them that makes them targets? Will he find and save the others before it’s too late?
The teaser trailer says, “Before a lifetime of adventure, came the adventure of a lifetime.” And true to form, executive produced by the likes of Steven Spielberg, the film feels like a fun cross between a detective mystery and an action adventure, neither of which is meant to be taken seriously. You’ll have to ignore plot holes, implausible character arcs, and anachronisms.
Legacy Characters, Original Story
Director Barry Levinson’s film is the first full-length feature to show off a completely computer-generated character: a medieval knight who comes alive from a stained-glass window. Sure, some sequences seem contrived, inserted more for the sake of flexing then still-fledgling CGI muscle, but many others advance the story.Nicholas Rowe, at 19, is one of the youngest actors to play Holmes. At 6’4” he’s also taller than some of the tallest adult stars who’ve played Holmes, including Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett.
Chubby, bespectacled Alan Cox, 15, is believable as a young Watson with a soft spot for custard tarts and the tried-and-tested. That’s until Holmes rescues him from one of those attachments. Guess which? As Holmes’s hunt for clues leads the duo, and later the trio, into a web of suspense, Watson pleads, “I might get caught … that would mean trouble.” Holmes is incredulous; “You would let trouble ruin an opportunity for adventure?”
In interviews, Mr. Columbus explains why he created a Holmes who was so emotional, companionable, and sensitive as a boy. It seemed the obvious boyhood origin of a character who would go on to become colder, more calculating, more cynical, and aloof as a man. To explain asides that would mark Holmes as an adult, Columbus offers his own little touches. It’s Waxflatter who congratulates Holmes when he deduces something noteworthy: “Elementary, my dear Holmes,” a phrase that screen versions of Holmes used for decades to address Watson, even if it apparently never figured in that exact form in Doyle’s stories.
Boldly, Mr. Columbus envisages an extroverted, personable boy who’d precede the loner, and largely unsmiling adult Holmes. Here, admirers surround him. He loves offering his hand, and introducing himself a la James Bond, “Holmes, Sherlock Holmes.” The boy betrays growing excitement as he, slowly, acquires the trappings (magnifying glass, deerstalker, calabash pipe, tweed Inverness cape) of the formidable man he’ll become. But there is also a hint of sadness and a premonition that his greatest fear, of being alone, may eventually come true.
