Personally, a major pleasure derived from watching yesteryear films, particularly those who are angling for a mainstream market, is to carp about how formulaic and dated they are in today’s eyes, and once in a while, getting bowled over for some ingenuity whether it is in the technological aspect or the message they try to convey.
Barry Levinson’s YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, is a case in point, a bold fabrication of a teenager Holmes (Rowe) first meeting his stalwart sidekick John Watson (Cox) in a London’s boarding school, and together they take it in their strides to solve mysterious murders conducted in the most bizarre way, which look like ostensible suicides or accidents, but are engendered by hallucinogenic thorns shot from a blowpipe.
Written by Chris Columbus (another collaboration with Steven Spielberg as the producer apart from THE GOONIES), YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES almost uncannily foreshadows the scribe’s latterly envisaging of his HARRY POTTER movies, a trinity of the protagonists, two boys plus one girl Elizabeth (Ward), Holmes’ love interest, Watson is likened to a chubbier Harry Potter and a snotty rival student Dudley (Rhodes) anachronistically models after Draco Malfoy, to say nothing of the interior design of the school, its chemistry class and staff, and not to mention the preternatural elements.
Actually it is the latter that might galvanize its new audience, and the film configures a cracking prologue to pique our curiosity, but that thrill conduced by unexpected utility of special effects (including a very rudimental CGI character, the first ever put into a motion picture!) can only last for a while, when repetition follows and the crime-solving procedural involving Holmes’ rapier-like deduction dismally cedes to a fun-size version of Indiana Jones’ adventure (when ancient Egyptian deity and a jerry-built underground pyramid are introduced as an exotic barbarity), the thrills are gone (should we blame it on the producer?) and the identity of the culprit is plain as day, yet who must still be Anglo-Saxon, though half-breed.
Lastly, what also sticks in Yours Truly’s craw is the way an innocuous gal, without any fault of her own (even in her last gasp, she looks impeccably comely) is doomed to be “fridged” to feebly account for the grown-up Holmes’ cynical, dispassionate personas, to keep him footloose and fancy-free for his grand future, and all her undoing is falling in love with the wrong boy, that is quite the ‘80s screen sexism in a nutshell.
referential entries: Steven Spielberg’s INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984, 7.2/10); Guy Ritchie’s SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS (2011, 5.8/10); Herbert Ross’ THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION (1976, 6.7/10).
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