Young Sherlock Holmes (PG-13, 1985)

YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES came out under the auspices of Steven Spielberg's production company, when other Hollywood directors were signing on to do Spielberg-like fantasies with the finest possible casts, imagination, and special effects. The title alone suggested a can't-miss property. And yet for all the high hopes, Young Sherlock Holmes unfurls disappointingly, like old Indiana Jones. Yes, there's an elementary change in scenery and accents, but the cliffhanger stunts, cartoonish foreigners, black-magic stuff (all the more inconsequential because we find out it's all delusions), ludicrous temple-of-doom that, just like the Death Star, comes complete with a convenient self-destruct mode -- it doesn't take a you-know-who to deduce it was all swiped from other Lucas-Spielberg 1980s blockbusters.

Scriptwriter Chris Columbus was later to make the first few Harry Potter movies, and the early school scenes (complete with a Draco Malfoy-lookalike antagonist) do have a nice flavor and potential, before the hand-me-down thrill rides and the way-silly revenge scheme at the center of the mystery take over. Young Sherlock Holmes not an awful movie; it just should have been so much better. Case closed.