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Rating:  - Far fetched story line
I have realized that every spin off of Sherlock Holmes disappoints me greatly (I am an ardent fan of the BBC series with Jeremy Brett as Holmes).
I do not intend to spoil the plot and hence I shall write no more about the mystery.
On the bright side, they have tried hard to do justice to Sherlock Holmes whimpsies, e.g, fencing, the hat, existence of Mycroft et al.
This one simply adds to my big fat collection of Sherlock Holmes DVDs. I wont dispose of it, but I wont be watching it for the second time either.
Rating:  - Wish there were sequels.
I enjoyed this movie so much I wish there were sequels. It's Harry Potter without magic.
Rating: - A Great Mystery Flick for Young Sherlock Readers
I teach 6th grade Reading/Language Arts, and I always do a mystery unit with my students. We read several Sherlock Holmes stories, such as "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and the unit culminates with the kids writing their own versions of "The Strange Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes". I am always on the lookout for quality DVD's for this unit because the old Basil Rathbone films just don't cut it with the kids. The movie "Young Sherlock Holmes", directed by Steven Spielberg, is fantastic. Holmes is a teenager in the movie, and the audience learns how he first met Dr. Watson and acquired several of his iconic items: his peaked hat, pipe, magnifying class and cloak. The film is as exciting as it is informative and accurate in period detail. It's reminiscent of a Indiana Jones-type thriller. All in all, my students loved it and asked to see it again! I highly recommend this film for classroom use (It's rated PG-13, for some mild violence, I guess.)
Rating:  - Three quarters of a terrific picture
I agree with Mr. DeRiemer's comment: "A wonderful film for the most part, until it moves into young Indiana Jones territory", although I am inclined to put it this way: A wonderful film until it goes straight into the toilet in the last half hour.
Holmes faced many exotic foes who were represented in perfectly convincing ways--a Napoleon of Crime, some Scowrers, a Speckled Band, a Sign of Four, multiple Garridebs, a whole League of Red-Headed Men, even an American mezzo-soprano who turned out to be tougher and smarter than he was. There was really no need at all to mess up the ending of the picture with a gaudily witless journey into Indiana Jones-Land.
Some earlier reviewers have commented on a resemblance between this story and the Harry Potter series. At least one reviewer has speculated that the idea (at least) of the books is derived from the film. The fact is that there is a long history of schooldays adventures in England, probably originating in "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and highlighted by Rudyard Kipling's "Stalky & Co." as well as a series of novels by P.G. Wodehouse set at a London school called Wryken.
There is also an undercurrent of disdain from "Sherlockian" (American) and "Holmesian" (British) purists who object to the distortion of the relationship and initial meeting of Holmes and Watson. Well, add me to the purists. Anyone who will take the time to read "A Study in Scarlet," the first published Holmes story--something that I heartily recommend to anyone who thinks THIS film is good!--will find a precise description of how, when, where and why the two men met for the very first time. There is no way on earth that the two could previously have met as boys.
However, for what it is worth, all could be salvaged if the boy in the film were not John H. Watson but a certain "Young Stamford," the mutual friend who brought the two strangers together and promptly evaporated entirely out of the series.
For those too young to have seen the theatrical release of this picture, I will point out that this was the first major film to use CGI effects. In fact, Intel made a major product placement based on that fact. When the film was released, many of us were agog with anticipation of a soon-to-come wonderful new thing called a "Pentium." Boldly placed among the film's credits was an announcement that some special effects had been created with a computer using a Pentium chip (which, I imagine, was running at about 90 Hz in those long-ago days.) [SEE COMMENTS NUMBER TWO AND THREE BELOW]
Rating:  - A wonderful film for the most part, until it moves into young Indiana Jones territory during the last 25 minutes
"It was a cold, snowy day in early December. Lack of funds had forced my old school to close. I was being sent to a new one in the middle of term. I was accustomed to the opened, relaxed expanse of the country, and now, I was in the heart of London at the height of the Victorian Era. The streets were teeming with every activity imaginable. I was very taken by what I saw. As I stepped from my carriage, the sight of my new school filled me with fear and apprehension, yet, I was swept with a wave of curiosity. However, nothing could prepare me for the extraordinary adventure that lay ahead, or the extraordinary individual who would change my life." That's an old John Watson speaking in a narrative voice-over, and moments later at the Brompton School common we're going to see young Watson, played by Alan Cox at 15, meet Sherlock Holmes, played by Nicholas Rowe at 19. Watson has had his trunk delivered and Holmes is scratching away horribly at a violin. Holmes stops and nearly smashed the thing in frustration. "I should've mastered the damn thing by now," he cries. "How long have you been playing?" Watson asks. "Three days!"
The first three-quarters of the movie is a wonderful Holmsian adventure, full of deduction and growing friendship, as we see young Holmes exercise his slightly arrogant intelligence to put an insufferably superior student named Dudley in his place, assist an eccentric inventor, find tentative Victorian love with the inventor's niece, discover a pattern of assassination in the deaths of four elderly men, deal with a lazy Lestrade and a friendly fencing master, and establish a friendship with his young follower, Watson. The high-point is probably Holmes acceptance of a challenge from Dudley to locate where Dudley has hidden the school's fencing trophy...in no more than 60 minutes. The game is afoot as Holmes examines minute particles of...what?, locates snowy footprints in the school quadrangle, examines the school's kitchen...all with the clock ticking away and with the school's students racing after him, with Watson in the lead. It's clever and exiting. As the older Watson says in recollection when Holmes finds the trophy with seconds to spare, "It was a wonderful, heroic moment for Holmes. But little did he know that his amazing powers and talents would soon be put to a much greater test, a test of terrifying and deadly proportions."
And with that we're off into a case of murderous hallucinations with all sorts of scary special effects, of a deadly Egyptian cult in the heart of London, of young girls used for human sacrifices, of a caldron of revenge...and we realize that we've moved from a young Sherlock Holmes to a young Indiana Jones. From a loving and clever imagining of Holmes and Watson meeting at school and solving a vicious, exotic series of killings, we're up to our necks in the calculated hokum of a boy's own adventure, courtesy of executive producer Steven Spielberg, assisted by George Lucas' special effects studio. We even have an E.T. moment when young Holmes and Watson take off on a pedal-powered flying device to soar over London at night in pursuit of the villain. The first part of the movie is so good that it just about disguises the calculated playing-with-the-audience build-up to the conclusion. Nicholas Rowe, tall and lean, and Alan Cox, round and quizzical, are first-rate as young Holmes and young Watson. They've continued to act but never had better roles. Michael Hordern, who gives us the narrative voice of the older Watson, provides much of the heart of the movie. We can imagine an elderly Watson looking back at this first case with affection and appreciation. At the end of the movie Holmes is leaving Brompton School while Watson will graduate and go on to medical studies. Watson says goodbye to his friend and stands near as Holmes enters the horse-drawn carriage. We hear the older Watson tell us, "As I watched Holmes settle into his seat, a sudden feeling came over me -- that I would most certainly be seeing him again. So ended my first adventure with Mister Sherlock Holmes. As I watched his carriage disappear into the distance, I realized that I had forgotten to thank him. He had taken a weak, frightened boy and made him into a courageous, strong man. My heart soared. I was filled with confidence. I was ready for whatever mystery or danger lay ahead. I was ready to take on the greatest and most exciting adventure of them all, and I knew it was bound to involve Sherlock Holmes."
The DVD transfer looks very good. There are no extras.
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