Review – Young Sherlock Holmes

I’m glad I didn’t see this movie when it first came out. More than 20 years after the fact, I’ve got the opportunity for some interesting compare-and-contrast between this Spielberg/Levinson production and the Harry Potter series. Both feature gifted English kids doing battle with the forces of darkness. To be sure, back in 1985 the story-telling wasn’t quite as sophisticated. Parts of this play like a kid-oriented remake of the Indiana Jones movie that came out a year earlier. And role-model-seeking girls accustomed to the wit and assertiveness of Hermione Granger aren’t likely to think much of the silent dishrag love interest in this show. On the other hand, I found it refreshing to see the protagonists prevail through intelligent and inventive problem solving rather than silly magic mumbo-jumbo. And if memory serves, this is the first big studio production to use computer-generated effects for something that wasn’t supposed to look like a computer-generated effect. It’s brief and rough, but in the stained-glass-knight sequence you can see the shape of things to come. Mildly amusing