Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson meet as boys in an English Boarding school. Holmes is known for his deductive ability even as a youth, amazing his classmates with his abilities. When they discover a plot to murder a series of British business men by an Egyptian cult, they move to stop it.
Young Sherlock Holmes is a genuinely distinctive origin-story concept that predates the modern trend of reimagining iconic characters as youths, giving it strong novelty. The Egyptian cult mystery is entertaining and the boarding school setting is charming, though the plot grows formulaic by the third act. Acting is solid but unremarkable from its young cast. Cinematography is competent Amblin-era adventure filmmaking with some memorable sequences, including an early CGI stained-glass knight that was groundbreaking for 1985. The ending, however, is a significant weak point — it feels rushed and emotionally unsatisfying, with the villain reveal and resolution handled too abruptly, and the post-credits sting, while clever, can't rescue the deflated finale.