Sandbox Sleuth

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER

Directed and Written by GENE WILDER

One expects something in the Mel Brooks mold--raucous, anarchical, anachronistic--from Gene Wilder's debut as a director. He has, after all, recruited members of the Brooks mob: Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise. Like Brooks' most recent works, Adventure is a broad parody of a hoary popular form, in this case the period detective drama.

Wilder soon forces an adjustment of those expectations--neither up nor down, but definitely sideways. His sensibility is gentler and even more childlike than that of his master. Playing a young Sigi Holmes,* a detective suffering a near-terminal case of sibling rivalry because Big Brother Sherlock is always getting the good cases, he becomes a pawn in one of the latter's non-stop games of mastermind with Professor Moriarty. This one has something to do with a stolen state document on which the fate of empire trembles.

It is not important. What is important--and very nicely done too--is the way everyone reverts instantly to childhood in moments of crisis. Moriarty (Leo McKern) is set up as a math wizard, for example, but his blackboard is covered with a second-grader's mistakes. When he conducts an auction of the purloined parchment, he is reduced to counting on his fingers as he tries to convert francs into pounds. Later Moriarty and DeLuise (playing a hammy opera singer) squabble over the document in a manner more appropriate to four-year-olds disputing possession of a pail in a sandpile--nose twisting, cheek pinching, hair pulling--than to grown-up spies.

Both Fists. Everything goes pretty much that way. Kahn contributes an other wonderful impersonation of a sex tease with a weird combination of airiness and the pouts. Within that well-formed woman lurks the soul of a perpetual adolescent. Wilder's high moment comes during an interview with the Foreign Secretary. There is, you see, this tempting box of chocolates, and His Lordship catches Sigi with not a finger in them but both fists deeply, gloriously into the goodies.

One could wish for a little more narrative drive in the proceedings, a little more invention and tension. Still, Wilder's film would probably be a worthwhile addition to the CIA's indoctrination program--reminding recruits that espionage is essentially the stuff of childish fantasy, therefore dangerous for grown men to take too seriously. As for the rest of us, the movie is probably the fastest escape from the holiday blahs that Hollywood is offering this season.

* Wilder's invention, Sigi should not be confused with Sherlock's older brother Mycroft, who was a lazy mathematical genius.

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