Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and Madeline Kahn all appeared in one of my all time favorite comedy films but this wasn't the one. Actually, this picture looks like it was trying to borrow heavily from "Young Frankenstein" but with just a bit too much slapstick humor and infantile behavior to suit my own personal taste. That's not to say that there weren't some genuinely funny bits; for example Professor Moriarty's (Leo McKern) exchange rate fiasco trying to sell the Redcliff Document just cracked me up. The 'Red Herrings Daily' sight gag on the street vendor sandwich board was also pretty clever, that's the kind of stuff that I like to catch in a parody flick. Madeline Kahn's Jenny Hill reminded me a bit of the Mary Astor character in "The Maltese Falcon", enough so that it seemed like a subliminal tribute to the Bogart film. However when you have all the players hamming it up as much as possible and then throw Dom DeLuise into the mix, well then you're just asking for an 'over the top' that I sometimes find hard to take. For Sherlock Holmes fans though, this might be just the ticket if you're looking for a light hearted treatment of the famous fictional detective. Then you can return to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce to solve a real mystery.
