"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!" <br /><br />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." <br /><br />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 cauldron 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."