This movie begins and ends by saying that there are no Sherlock Holmes novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that this movie is based on. It says that it means no disrespect to the man and this is simply how the people who worked on this movie personally interpreted what it would be like if Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson met at an early age. This movie features a young Sherlock Holmes and that's really all you need to know. The most noteworthy thing about film is the special effects. It was the first time in any movie that a full CGI character appeared. It's the knight that appears out of the stained glass window.I was fearing it would just be a really brief scene but it really is important to the story. Even the DVD advertises the great special effects. Honestly, for a film decades old, they hold up! Of course, this is a good movie for the good writing and the like. I thought Sherlock was narrating at first, but it was actually Watson. We get some really cute set ups to later parts of the Sherlock Holmes mythology. It all pays up at the end with a great climax and be sure to stay after the credits too. I was reminded of "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom" which came out the previous year also made by Steven Spielberg. I had no idea he worked on this movie and was so prolific! ***

And that's the answer to the question :"What have I gotten myself into?" This is a sublime exchange and even more when you know it's between a young Watson and the titular "Young Sherlock Holmes". I never forgot these lines ever since I saw the film with my Dad on a Sunday night when I was 10. These lines encapsulates everything Spielberg movies are about. Yes, the director is Barry Levinson but Steven Spielberg was the only name that could ring a bell for me at that time, as it was popping out in the credits of every movie that targeted my age-group, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "Back to the Future" or "The Goonies". His name carried great premises of adventures, special effects, and kids trapped in extraordinary situations… adventures of a lifetime indeed.But it was the French version I saw and the tile was "The Secret of the Pyramid", so it's not until John Watson (Alan Cox) and Sherlock Holmes (Nicholas Rowe) met that I realized the film would also feature a duo I was very familiar with. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are among these myths it is impossible to overlook as a kid, or at least at that time, I grew up with the Manga dog-themed cartoon of "Sherlock Holmes" and the cliché of the detective wearing the Holmes' hat, carrying the magnifying glass was printed in my mind, not to mention the "elementary" line. So I didn't expect the film to be about Holmes but his presence was the icing on the cake and made the story twice more captivating.But time has a strange effect and while I loved the adventure and the mystery behind these hallucination-driven murders, now, I wish there was more of the typical Holmes and Watson relationship and mystery-solving. The memorable introduction of Holmes and Watson in the college, the great dialogues involving riddles, and the magic art of deduction and a mentor-master relationship made of fascination and admiration, matched the original books' spirit, and making Watson a chubby teenager admiring the slender, intuitive prodigy is the stuff gutsy screenplays are made of, but then with all the special effects and the supernatural elements, the film ventures into familiar territories, with thrilling sequences tailor-made for the 80's, and sometimes ahead of their time.The film is pretty creative when it comes to the murders sequences and the hallucinations make an efficient precocious use of computer imagery, especially with that knight coming out the stained glass, and these scary and nightmarish gargoyles or pheasants, and we also have investigation leading to a mysterious sect whose setting and penetrating chants remind of the Temple of Doom just like a flight sequence near Big Ben is an obvious homage to "E.T". This is Steven Spielberg at the pinnacle his career, but then the film teeters on the brink of the supernatural adventure genre than keeping solidly rooted to its mystery basis, which could have been acceptable if it didn't have to be at the expenses of realism and common sense. And I'm not even talking of the dreadful pastry sequences that definitely belonged to another movie. My problem was with the characterization.Watson might not be as bright as Holmes but I couldn't buy that after a series of strange deadly incidents, he couldn't trust Holmes' intuition. Near the end, they are looking for a way to save his love interest Elizabeth (Sophie Ward), and Holmes' idea is to make a diversion, wasn't it the most obvious thing to do? The question should have been: how can I make a diversion? The film features so many brilliant parts, that some are harder to accept. For instance, when one of the suspects says an insect has just bitten him, why didn't they guess it was the effect of the poisoned dart? These bits of lazy writing, I suspect, are due to the difficulty of swinging back and forth between the requirements of the adventure genre and yet keeping the characterization consistent.Still, Chris Columbus manages to maintain our interest on the duo and the story serves their friendship, never the opposite. The acting helps and it comes to the point even the romantic subplot never feels forced and adds a new dimension to Sherlock Holmes. But this is a project that had so much to offer that its choice to play on the safe side canceled its chances for posterity and it's not surprising that it isn't celebrated like "The Goonies" or "Back to the Future", it is an underrated gem to the best, but the "adventure of a lifetime" deserved better, maybe they should have stuck to their guns and keep it an adventure of Sherlock Holmes and who knows what good could have been brought. Or maybe it was just… too ahead of its time and had the same film been released today, with all the special effects, CGI-craze and traditional myths' exploitation, it might have scored better. Still, Nicholas Rowe and Alan Cox are such great younger counterparts to their iconic characters that I wish they could have other adventures to share.But the film was indeed meant as a tender homage to the two icons rather than non-canon adventure. It opens with one disclaimer insisting that the film is not based on Arthur Conan Doyle's adventure but it feels the need to mention it again in the ending credits, as to make sure there would be no connection whatsoever between these two universes. I'm still glad they choose to end it with Sherlock wearing his trademark cloak, glass, hat and smoking pipe. Now, did Columbus make something different to mark a clearer distance from the book or did he take this artistic license in order to make something different, now, this is a riddle on the same vein than the egg or the chicken, and it'll take more than a Sherlock to solve it.

The Temple of Doom-flavoured UK title for this Steven Spielberg-produced adventure—Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear—gives a pretty good idea of what can be expected: Sherlock Holmes hasn't got a whip to crack, and a deerstalker replaces the Fedora, but underneath all of the film's Conan Doyle trappings, this is essentially another in a long line of Indiana Jones-inspired movies, complete with a Thuggee-style Egyptian cult murdering people with hallucinogenic blow-darts and performing human sacrifices in their underground pyramid.As such, Holmes' sleuthing abilities are more than matched by his derring-do, the young detective (ably played by Nicholas Rowe) swashbuckling his way through the film, accompanied by trusty sidekick Watson (Alan Cox) and love interest Elizabeth (Sophie Ward). This being a Spielberg production, Young Sherlock Holmes benefits from great production design (snowy Victorian London looks wonderful) and is heavy on the special effects, with impressive hallucinatory set-pieces involving stop-motion animation, animatronics, and even an early example of CGI (albeit very brief).If you're a fan of both Sherlock Homes and Indiana Jones, this 'Indiana Holmes' adventure should provide more than enough escapist fun for the duration. 7/10.

This is a non-Walter Conan Doyle story about school-aged John Watson meeting Sherlock Holmes at Brompton Academy. He also meets Professor Rupert T. Waxlfatter, a brilliant retired schoolmaster and Holmes' mentor, who's the author of numerous books on chemistry and physics. But he is considered a little crazy due to his brazen experimentation attempts with a manned bicycle-like flying vehicle along with his inherent eccentricity. Waxflatter lives in an unused tower on school grounds, along with his niece and Holmes' sweetheart, Elizabeth Hardy. Holmes is also close to Professor Rathe, the Brompton fencing master. Several murders are committed in London using a powerful hallucinogenic delivered through a thorn shot by a cloaked assassin with a blowgun. Dudley, a school rival, frames Holmes for cheating on an exam and Waxflatter becomes one of the murder victims. Holmes secretly stays on the school's grounds in Waxflatter's old tower, getting help from Watson and Elizabeth to find Waxflatter's murderers. Their investigation leads to the uncovering of an Egyptian cult and an old grudge against Waxflatter and the other victims from a ruined business deal.This movie had the Spielberg-Amblin Entertainment magic and feeling of an exciting 1980's adventure that seems to have been lost. It featured some cutting edge visual effects created by Lucasfilm and a script by Chris Columbus. Some of the action and violence is a bit intense for a family film but it's nothing you wouldn't see in Indiana Jones.