Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Young Sherlock Holmes is a great looking movie. Everything about its Victorian aesthetic, snow-covered burgs, golden-lit night scenes bleed with charm. Some characters are wonderful looking too, specifically the one-eyed man who sells Watson Holmes' stock calabash pipe.Not everything is super hot, though. The scene where Sherlock and Watson go to the exotic tavern with all of the Arab and Asian stereotypes is pretty cartoonish-- the informant they meet there wouldn't look out of place as a live-action villain from Team America: World Police ("durka durka" faux-language for sure) and the music couldn't be more fanciful if it tried. Plus, the filmmakers tried wedging in too many Sherlock-y elements: Sherlock says "the game is a foot" one time too many, and we never really needed to know where Sherlock got his patronizing catchphrase, "Dyno-mite!" (Wait, sorry-- I mean, "Elementary.") Standout scenes/rich images are the stained glass hallucination, the attic setting, the meal hall at night, the labs, and the pyramid. I'll be returning to this film not so much for the plot, but to drink in its visual display.

Way back in 1983, critics were disappointed in "Something Wicked This Way Comes" because they'd expected a lot of computer-generated images and, except for a brief shot of an incoming train, they didn't get any.They got their wish finally. My wish is that their wish hadn't been so fulsomely fulfilled.Not only are there multiple monsters hopping around but the plot is out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," except that instead of going to Egypt, Egypt is brought to the heroes -- young Holmes (Nicholas Rowe) and Watson (Alan Cox). The epilogue tells us that this is how the two might have first met, as fellow students in an English public school, but that's not true. We know from Conan-Doyle that they were strangers until they decided to share digs on Baker Street as adults.No sense explaining the plot. We can put it this way. If you liked "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and its many sequels and clones, you'll like this. If you like CGIs, you'll like this. If you like Karl Orff's "Carmina Burana", you'll like this.If you -- well, nope. I guess that's about it.

This film was very entertaining when I watched it. It shows an imagined meeting of Holmes and Watson, as teens, at a boarding school. Holmes also meets his love at the school, no not another boy, the daughter of a retired professor who lives upstairs. Sophie Ward plays this love interest but is killed in the end. Someone looking for a reason Holmes never married?? The only sticking points I had was with the Egyptian cult that the sole survivor of an Egyptian village destroyed from a bad dig sets up in England. Usually villagers had little if any book learning, could neither read or write. How could a village peasant get the money, education, and followers to set up the cult? Then, how come every cultist appears to be a white, Englishman, no Egyptian's wanted in? Outside of that though I thought this was a very well written and acted movie. Fun to watch

There is a lot to like and dislike in this ambitious effort by Steven Spielberg and Chris Columbus. What I most dislike are the overly vivid hallucinations that the victims of the blow-gun attacks experience. They have a nightmarish quality that borders on that of a horror film, which a Sherlock Holmes movie should never be. I do not object to the blow-gun poison as a plot device, as it is used in the early Fox-Universal films as well--more than once. I must confess that I have seen more than have read most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and most Sherlock movies are not at all true to A. Conan Doyle's written pages.However, the introduction of characters in this film is brilliant, showing both Holmes and Watson as adolescents. Introducing the headmaster who later assumes the identity of "Moriarity" is beyond belief, yet somehow credible here. In this film, Sherlock loses his first love, Elizabeth, and, at least in the movies, it appears that having Holmes as a love interest leads to a short life-span, just like with the James Bond Girls. Sophie Ward plays Elizabeth, and she is amazingly beautiful, young, and innocent. (This tradition continues even in the new Robert Downey Jr. series.) Note also that this "Moriarity" is not the "Napoleon of Crime" but rather a tall, aristocratic-looking individual. (Anthony Higgins)A most enjoyable film in spite of its excesses, it is more entertaining than it should be. There is a great enthusiasm to the direction, and never a dull moment. My other complaint: While watching the human sacrifice temple scenes, it seems more like an Indiana Jones action movie than a Sherlock Holmes film. Be sure to watch the film, to it's entire conclusion through the ending titles, for a surprise twist.DVD review: The 2010-reissued DVD has no special features at all! Not even a trailer! A sloppy Paramount-DVD transfer with negative scratches and film dust.