Watching it again, and having just done a post on the Billy Wilder Holmes film, it struck us how much this movie plays like a lighter, faster, juvenile version of "The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes".....
In both films, there's abundant wit about Holmes superpowers of deduction, a confounding mystery and a sad bittersweet romance for Holmes......
While Wilder experienced no end of difficulties with his film's primary special effect, a replica of the Loch Ness monster, "Young Sherlock Holmes", under the production guidance of Steven Spielberg, dazzles its viewers with the wonders of Industrial Light and Magic and Pixar.....
Both films benefit greatly from their music scores, with "Private Life"s lush Miklos Rosza concerto and "Young Sherlock"s lilting, flavorful score from Bruce Broughton......
The big difference between the two films is, of course, the worldview and life experience of their makers. Wilder's sly humor and lifelong sardonic cynicism largely dominate "Private Life"......"Young Sherlock", scripted by Chris Columbus right after his other Spielberg production, "The Goonies" has the gee-whiz, youthful exuberance a fanboy's fantasy, a movie designed for younger audiences entranced by "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters"......
In fact, Columbus shamelessly plunders "Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom" for his villains......a gruesome, mock-Egyptian cult that boils and mummifies screaming young women as they chant before a huge pyramid.......they're sort of a British-based branch of that heart-ripping Kali bunch from "Temple Of Doom"....
And yet we still blatantly lapped up every ridiculous moment of it.......especially when the film regularly erupted in brief but vivid Harryhausen-style special effects......(the cult shoots blow darts dipped in hallucinogens at their victims, causing them to imagine all sorts of fanciful monsters, including a Pixar CGI stained glass Knight who jumps free of his church window....)
What we found fascinating in both films......their conclusions. With their adventure completed, Billy Wilder's adult Holmes (Robert Stephens) and "Young Sherlock"s gangly teen sleuth (Nicholas Rowe) have both had their hearts broken, left to press on with a sadder-but-wider sense of melancholy. (And that leads us to believe that Columbus may have borrowed that concept from the Wilder film as surely as he sampled the cultists from "Temple Of Doom")
If we were in a quipping mood (which we usually are), we'd refer to "Young Sherlock Holmes" as as 'elementary' version of the Wilder film. But that doesn't make it any less fun to watch.......for the BQ, this game's always afoot......we deduce 4 stars (****).
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