Full disclosure: I worked on this movie. It was my first feature film credit, in fact. All of us at the old Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Division learned a ton, mostly from Dennis Muren, while making it. And Dennis learned from us that the future of visual effects was CGI. This has the first 3D CG character integrated into a live action film, and for many years had the only rack-focus CG shot ever seen. ILM did a fantastic job with the food puppets, stop-motion harpies, and all. I could tell stories.

I remember coming out of the crew screening feeling, well, that it wasn't quite the movie we'd hoped. I wasn't alone in this. Dennis' last lesson to us, delivered…

ENGLISH VERSION below

Es war ein kalter Abend, als ich erneut den Fall "Young Sherlock Holmes" aufrollte. Schon die Idee, Holmes und Watson als Schulfreunde zu sehen, wirkte zunächst wie ein Schock – doch bei näherer Betrachtung? Genial! Die ungleiche Freundschaft zwischen Holmes, dem überheblichen Detektiv in spe, und Watson, seinem bewundernden Gefährten, lässt sich herrlich in den jugendlichen Eifer übertragen. Man merkt sofort: Diese Schule ist der ideale Nährboden für kommende Abenteuer.

Mit exzentrischen Lehrern wie Professor Waxflatter, der verzweifelt versucht, das Fliegen zu erfinden, bietet die Privatschule genug Kuriositäten, um Sherlocks scharfen Verstand schon früh zu schärfen. Als dann mysteriöse Todesfälle auftauchen, knackt Holmes den Fall mit gewohnter Präzision. Halluzinationen, ein geheimer Kult, ein mysteriöser Tempel (bei dem…

As much a retrospective this as it is a film review but anyway......

Back in 1985 when Steven Spielberg could do no wrong at the box office and was in the midst of the Indiana Jones phenomenon he decided to produce an adventure picture in time for Christmas that was very much in the aforementioned Indiana Jones mould based on the younger years of the iconic fictional London sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

Revising some established aspects of the Holmes myth such as him meeting his long-time assistant Doctor John Watson in his adult years the set-up here is that they in fact first encountered each other at a London based boarding school which the latter has only just started attending in…

I’ve been avoiding this movie my whole life just because of the title. The whole “see what your favorite characters were like as children” concept has just never appealed to me. And if it has to be done, it seems more suited to television or comic books; any kind of serialization. 

What a bloody fool I’ve been!

All the ingredients for peak era Amblin entertainment are here, but given their own unique twist within the concept and setting. 

—Kids without proper supervision getting into mischief and figuring things out on their own—it works as well in Victorian London as it does in Reagan era American suburbs. 

—Inventive high energy set pieces—these often emphasizing creative problem solving over action, but still…

Young Sherlock Holmes is a better film than I remember from my previous watch, though that was many years ago as a preteen. It’s no masterpiece or anything, but the idea of the origin story of Holmes & Watson meeting in school and beginning their famed partnership solving crimes is an interesting one indeed. There are some things lacking a bit in this one, but I really enjoy Nicholas Rowe as Holmes, and the idea of an Egyptian cult being behind a number of murders in England has some extra relevance when you considering the colonizing and pilfering that was done in North Africa. There’s also some pretty great for the time visual effects, though they don’t completely hold up now,…

Watched the newly released Paramount Blu-ray.

"Young Sherlock Holmes and the Temple of Doom."

A film that stood very high on my desperately-needs-a-Blu-ray list finally made the jump from DVD to Blu-ray. The image and sound quality were nice, yet it was slightly disappointing it's only a bare-bones vanilla release without even a commentary track in sight.

My high rating is probably fueled by strong feelings of nostalgia, but for me this has always been the perfect cocktail of Spielbergian excitement, a solid detective story, high-octane "Indiana Jones"-style adventures and some pretty nifty dark gateway-horror moments, courtesy of a couple of vivid hallucinations involving some creatively disturbing and grotesque mostly practical special effects. The glass-stained knight effect went down in…

Harry Potter and the Young Detective of Baker Street.

This film is absolutely 1980's Harry Potter. Let's examine the similarities shall we...

- Alan Cox's Watson would have been the perfect Harry Potter.
- The Prep School that they attended looks eerily similar to Hogwarts.
- The Great Hall looks like the same great hall of Hogwarts and even the tables are set the same way.
- There are scenes that involve flying.
- The sword duel seems to mimic the scene of the wizard duel in Chamber of Secrets.
- There is a character named Dudley
- Dudley actually closely resembles Draco Malfoy and his hair even turns Malfoy white at one point.
- The shop that Holmes' mentor…

"Only seconds left, Holmes. I assume you've given up."
"Never assume anything, my good fellow."

🎂🎂🎂 Happy 75th Birthday to Anthony Higgins 🎂🎂🎂

What a delight to revisit! I first saw Young Sherlock Holmes when my cousins rented it on VHS from their local video store, Cinémathèque, around the corner from where they grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope; that must have been around twenty years ago. I think it stands up quite well, functioning both as a nice introduction to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved characters in teen iterations - the film is careful to state during both the opening and end credits that this is essentially fan fiction, not an adaptation of any preexisting Doyle…