The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother 
                                          
Director: Gene Wilder
Year: 1975
Rating: 7.0
Gene Wilder in his debut as a director was coming off his appearances in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein and clearly the Mel Brooks style of absurd nutty slapstick visual humor came along with him. Brooks was a believer that you had to try for a laugh every few minutes if not more - some land, some don't - but you keep feeding the audience. Honestly, I went into this dreading the idea - but it is Sherlock Holmes - or at least his brother - and I will watch anything Sherlock. In truth, I prefer mid-Woody Allen to Mel Brooks who just doesn't hit my funny bone. There is too much traffic in his frantic comedy and I am too slow to keep up. But much of this is plain silly and cracked me up. Like a security blanket, Wilder brings Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman to his debut. And adds Dom DeLuise as insurance. Their comfort playing off one another is clear - to the point where his bedroom scene with Kahn is hilarious and sexy. And not something a director in a comedy would do today. Without a busload of Intimacy Coordinators on hand.



Wilder makes a wise decision in making his character quite smart and appealing. Title notwithstanding, I was expecting him to be an idiot who through luck and accidents solves the case - but he does it through smarts and bravado. He resents the fact that his older brother Sherlock gets all the fame - Sure-luck as he refers to him - while his Private Investigation firm is unknown. A valuable document has been stolen from the Foreign Office which if it gets out will lead to war. They go to Sherlock to get it back. Here I think is an inside joke because Sherlock is played by Douglas Wilmer who was Sherlock in a British TV series in the mid-1960s - and Watson is Thorley Walters who was in many Hammer films but also played Watson in the 1962 Sherlock Holmes and the Pearl Necklace in 1972. No actor has looked more like our image of Holmes than Wilmer did. Holmes knowing he is being watched pretends to leave town and leave the case to his brother. And hopes the enemy will go after him.



Wilder and his sidekick played by googly-eyed Marty Feldman enter the case when Kahn shows up as a damsel in distress who lies every time she opens her mouth - except when she is singing - brings him into the case. Though he has no idea they are connected. Some of the humor was just strange such as the three of them breaking into song and hopping away like rabbits. I liked it but I didn't get it. Ionesco Surrealism? Just for the hell of it? Any idea that seems to have occurred to him makes it into the film. A few funny scenes though - the seduction scene - she only tells the truth when being felt up; the ball room dance when they realize the back of their pants is missing and the chaotic opera scene. Leo Kern plays Moriarty, Roy Kinnear as Moriarty's assistant and one of my favorite characters actors, Nicholas Smith (Are You Being Served for years) as the janitor in his building.