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Show 'Holmes': A case of crafty, cal low Ieoth I' ' V -CVV " '''''' ''--''I r A?-f-v ' ,l ' V 'V ; ' I' V;"'-' ; , ii -;rr: K Vft ' l "" '' " -' fV t. , I 1 .1.1-. - maiMljll a Xm. AVl,Cil' J. kl . 2L.i IMM'. v ' . hBBBMaBWHMHaHBi As the chapel ignites in flames around him, Nicholas Rowe, as the budding sleuth Holmes, wards off crazed members of a sinister religious cult in "Young Sherlock Holmes." Young Sherlock Holmes It's gratifying in "Young Sherlock Holmes" to see that the young actors could believably grow into the famous characters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Nicholas Rowe as young Holmes has the air of cold intellect and vague loneliness. And Alan Cox as Watson has a weary, resigned look that already suggests a middle-aged man. ' . The film, witten by Chris Columbus Colum-bus and Barry Levinson, wonders what would have happened if the two had met as youths in boarding school. Holmes is a shrewd young man, but a little shakey on the violin and with his deductions. As Inspector Inspec-tor Lestrade reminds him, he was wrong when he suspected the French ambassador was embezzling money. It was the Russian ambassador. am-bassador. Watson wants to be a doctor and has a weakness for French pastry. Holmes is beginning to acquire his trademarks, like the deerstalker cap and pipe. But he is primarily occupied oc-cupied with a rash of mysterious suicides which are not suicides at all. A cloaked figure with a blowgun is shooting Londoners with a hallucinogenic drug. The resulting delusions drive them to jump out of windows or throw themselves under carriages. One victim is Holmes' teacher and the uncle of his young love, Elizabeth (Sophie Ward). . Holmes traces the attacks to an Eastern cult and its mysterious temple, tem-ple, which takes the movie back to Indiana Jones country and exposes the influence of producer Steven Spielberg. The drug-induced delusions seen by the victims tiny gargoyles and monster hat racks also are an opportunity op-portunity for the special effects house, Industrial Light and Magic, to show its stuff. ' The movie, however, doesn't lose the Holmes touch. The eerie Victorian Vic-torian atmosphere can accommodate accom-modate the strange and supernatural super-natural and the fear of the exotic East. "Young Sherlock" is a charming, charm-ing, fast-moving thriller though you won't need Holmes' deductive powers to spot the villains before they are-revealed. One important note: Don't leave the theater before the credits are over or you'll miss one of the key points of the movie, i : RB written by a trio including Aykroyd, misses. A sneaky government agency handpicks a pair of bumbling lower-echelon lower-echelon employees for a special overseas mission. They are to penetrate Pakistan, slip over the border into the Soviet Union and destroy a new IBM missle site they think. Actually, they're just a pair of dumb decoys whose pupose is to draw off enemy attention from the real spy team a pair of fake doctors doc-tors in the desert. Guess who end up as the heroes? The screenplay is reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy's adventures in the French Foreign Legion 50 years ago. Aykroyd and Chase bumble through basic training under the derisive eye of a no-nonsense top sergeant. Practice maneuvers include in-clude funny bits in a G-force simulator and a sight gag with the two in earlapped pilot's hats nosediving off a tall platform in a wingless plane the CO calls it "radical vertical impact simulation." simula-tion." Chase reprises a lot of his familiar bits mugging and cribbing outrageously through a government exam, shouldering through a door j; with Aykroyd, making faces at a speaker who is turned away and pulling a straight face when the per- ; son turns to him. Maybe we've seen him being fresh ; and slapstick too often. After nearly two hours, it wears thin. ' Aykroyd, as always, is controlled and believable as a language and computer whiz. I Donna Dixon as a spy looks great in furs. And Steve Forrest is fanatically anti-commie as the ! military head of the operation. j John Landis directed the veteran I cast through a high-techCold War plot that has become all too familiar. The movie is good fun, but maybe the Aykroyd-Chase reunion would have benefitted from a story that was a little out of the common run. RM k A Classic I Recommended I Good double I feature material I Time-killer For masochists I only nllifkitf by Kick Brough mtmCS and Robin Moeneh more effective than both his "Romancing the Stone" , pictures. Shawn is a whiny, doomed character. And Moranis yammers into his phone at high speed he's handling 16 calls at once while his legs wobble like an epileptic Howdy Doody. After this, the picture settles down to a conventional satire about business neurosis and corruption. The tired question is will Reinhold become a disciple of the old shark who runs the company (Eddie Albert)? Or will he follow the idealistic young lady (Lori-Nan Engel) who is protesting the corporation's cor-poration's plan to abandon a small company town in favor of cheap labor in Latin America? Don't expect a surprise. Reinhold is charming and the script gives him some Bill Murray-style Murray-style lines, But most of the film is standard jabs at power-hungry female executives Jane Seymour as a lady boss installs a large phallic sculpture in her office; official pietyAlbert pie-tyAlbert brings in fascistic motivational speakers; and ruthless Latin American dictators. It's a shame the picture isn't better, bet-ter, especially with this cast. There are several comic actors of the "Saturday Night Live" school scattered scat-tered through the picture. Most memorable: Michael "Mr. Mike" O'Donoghue is cleaned up to play an executive and looks like a Wall Street vulture. RB VzSpiesLikeUs When a couple of former cohorts from the glory days of "Saturday Night Live" reunite for a movie, you naturally anticipate it will be a can't miss. "Spies Like Us," teaming Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd in a comedy Now Showing At the Holiday Village Cinemas: Rocky IV ! '-.Spies Like Us 'a White Nights Young Sherlock Holmes J- '"" 12 Head Office "Head Office" would make a great short comedy. The here, Judge Reinhold, hires on with1 a huge ' ruthless conglomerate, but on his first morning, he keeps getting shifted from one department to another because his supervisors, one by one, are being 86ed.- - One executive (Danny DeVito) takes the rap when a shady stock deal he brokered for the company is exposed. The company fires him and ' hqjrjolKips out a high window. '"Reinhold's second boss. (Rick ' Moranis) is a pressure junkie who f finally pops and dies of a heart at-; at-; tack. And his third (Wallace Shawn) has just received word he's only got eight months to live. : t . These three , actors disappear quickly,, but they all give hilarious " black-humor ' ' portraits DeVito's . sweaty, ready-to-blow desperation is , "4 ' 1 |
