Young Sherlock Holmes

Just to help round out my movie watching experience and also because I don’t want you to think that all I watch is grown up shit I’m gonna take a look at a family movie.  Actually it’s one that I used to watch years ago but hadn’t seen in a long time.  The film I’m talking about is Young Sherlock Holmes.  Now don’t get worried that I labeled this a family movie because it has tons of adventure and if you’re a fan of Star Wars, Indiana Jones or any of that other Lucas/Spielberg shit then you’ll probably like this one. 

At the time I don’t think it was a very big deal but looking back on it now, this movie had an epic production.  You have producer Steven Spielberg, a screenplay by Chris Columbus (Dir: Home Alone, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), special effects by Stephen Norrington (Dir: Blade) and ILM (including John Lasseter who went on to be the head of Pixar and direct Toy Story) and directed by Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog, Sleepers).  So quite a motley crew.  What’s missing is that it doesn’t star really any one of note.

But anyway, we start with a guy who is on his way to eat dinner at a restaurant in turn of the century London.  Right before this stuffy old cobweb goes in to grab a bite he gets hit in the neck with something.  We don’t know what but it can’t be that serious because our character doesn’t seem bothered by it.  So he sits down, gets his meal and then HOLY SHIT!!!  The bird he ordered comes to life and starts attacking him!  And no one can see this but him so he looks bat shit insane.  Hold on, hold on.  I think that thing that this guy was struck by was some sort of a hallucinogen soaked dart.  That’s gotta be it.  I don’t think there’s any other explanation.  So this meaty Anglo tub scurries home only to have more hallucinations, this time with lamps and coat hangers.  He’s scared shitless and doesn’t know what to do so he jumps out of the window killing himself.  Credits roll.  Not a bad opening I think.

The rest of the movie is about a teenaged Sherlock Holmes and Watson figuring out who is pumping people full of hallucinogens causing them to kill themselves and why.  Now this was not an original Arthur Conan Doyle story.  This shit was made up by Chris Columbus when he was just starting out and right after he wrote The Goonies.  This is a pretty goddamn crazy idea for a family movie Chris.

Now because ILM worked on these effects, and it was the 80’s, this shit looked good.  Cool looking puppets and animatronics ‘n shit instead of CGI.  Well, actually there is a scene with CGI but don’t get all bent out of shape, let me explain.  ILM created the first all CGI character on film for this thing.  There’s a scene in a church where a priest starts hallucinating that a knight in a stained glass window comes to life and starts waving his sword at him.  The CGI knight is only on screen for probably less than thirty seconds but damn does it look good.  I’m telling you almost all CGI today doesn’t look as good as this thing from fucking 1985.  It’s too bad they didn’t have an endless budget to keep this scene going with the priest or someone battling the knight.  So this movie made some history, how ‘bout that?

This movie is really all about the hallucinations that the characters have and the actual mystery is kind of an added bonus.  It’s not that there couldn’t have been a movie just about solving a mystery without these state of the art special effects, because it probably wouldn’t have been half bad but it definitely would have been boring compared to what we have here.

Ok one more crazy hallucination but I’ll make it brief.  Alright, so at one point Holmes, Watson and Holmes’ girlfriend all get hit with the trippy darts and start to roll.  But it’s Holmes’ girlfriend that has the fucking creepiest vision out of the three.  She thinks that she’s being buried alive by her father while skeleton corpses hold her down.  But you know, it’s a family movie.