"Young Sherlock Holmes" is an entertaining, smart and literary thriller that makes a few unfortunate choices, leading to an uneven tone. Still, what works easily wins over what doesn't, and makes for not one one of the better Holmes' pastiches, but one of the better Indiana Jones wannabes.<br /><br />The early section of the film is a fanciful, briskly entertaining imaganing of the meeting of a young Holmes and Watson in a British prep school. While this clearly contradicts the account in Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet", crawls at the begining and end of the film apologize for this, and Levinson, Columbus and Spielberg clearly never try to pass it of as anything but a "what if." Columbus' writing here is clever, witty and true to the characters. Nicholas Rowe not only has the hawk-like features of a young Holmes, he captures the essence of the character. It is easy to see how the events of Colmumbus story lead the emotional, impetuous young Holmes to become the rational, emotionally reserved Holmes we know. Alan Cox's Watson, as is typical of Hollywood Holmes adaptions, is played as something of a buffoon, but nearly to the absurd extreme of Nigel Bruce in the Basil Rathbone films. Cox adds nice support.<br /><br />The second half of the film leads in something of an odd direction, becoming an intense action thriller that is at times jaw-droppingly similar to Spielberg's own "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." Those that complain the mystery itself is unlinke Doyle's work must only be familiar with the later short stories. In fact, it is a brillaint recreation of the style of his early novels, such as "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of Four", where exotic foreign conspiracies, revenge, and dangerous cult groups were the order of the day. To be sure, the action is more Indiana Jones than it is Holmes, but that in and of itself is not a bad thing. It is jarring for what begins as a light story of two schoolboys to become so dark and violent, however.<br /><br />The real misstep in "Young Sherlock Holmes" is in the two cult temple human sacrfice sequences, which are so blatantly reminiscent of "Temple of Doom" as to make a viewer feel he has gotten lost and wandered into the wrong film. They follow exactly the same pattern: Two heroes and a love interest stumble across and witness a human sacrifice. Then, after a further series of adventurs, the love interest is made the subject of a second sacrifice, and the heroes must rescue her and destory the temple. Someone at Amblin should have steered this in a slightly different direction. The cult and the action scenes are not a problem. The human sacrifice and temple scenes are.<br /><br />One last observation: the ending establishing Anthony Higgin's Rathe as the once and future Professor Moriarty is a great stinger. But Rathe was a fencing master (and, in his alter ego of Eh Tar, a vicious killer and pseudo-Satanic High Priest), and Moriarty was a mathematical genius. It is a stretch to think his mathematical abilites were attainied later in life. Perhaps Colmumbus should have made Rathe an intstructor of fencing AND math.<br /><br />Overall, the mix works, and "Young Sherlock Holmes" is an extremely entertaining film which unfortunately never found it's audience. Be prepared to suspend a little disbelief and you'll have a great time.<br /><br />