Without a Clue [DVD]

The basic joke of the would-be romp Without a Clue is that Dr Watson (Ben Kingsley) is a detecting genius who has had to hide his light under a bushel by hiring an alcoholic ham actor Reginald Kincaid (Michael Caine) to pose as his imaginary alter ego Sherlock Holmes. He is now frustrated because the blundering idiot is hailed as an infallible hero while he is forever being pushed out of the picture. To really work, the film should have cast a leading man who gives the impression that he might make a good serious Holmes, but Caine is all too credible in his idiot act. In one of the best jokes Watson covers up a faux pas by complementing Holmes on his convincing disguise as a drunken lout, and so the laughs that should come in a flow only manage to trickle.

The actual plot is about forged bank-notes ruining the Empire but is constructed to allow for the usual excursion by picturesque steam train to a clue-ridden holiday destination and some dirty deeds down by the docks. The leads coast through their routines but the supporting cast has an appropriately rat-like and embittered Inspector Lestrade from Jeffrey Jones, a winsomely duplicitous Victorian heroine from Lysette Anthony and a rather good goateed sadist Professor Moriarty from Paul Freeman. It can't hold a magnifying glass to Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, but as a Holmesian footnote it edges a deerstalker or so ahead of Gene Wilder's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. It certainly beats the Peter Cook-Dudley Moore Hound of the Baskervilles and John Cleese in The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It.--Kim Newman

Without A Clue presents an original twist on the famous Sherlock Holmes/Dr. John Watson stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This time, however, Dr. Watson is the one with a talent for solving mysteries, while Holmes is nothing but his fictional creation. After inventing the sleuth in a series of popular stories based on crimes he's solved, Dr. Watson decides to satisfy the public's desire to see Holmes by hiring actor Reginald Kincaid to masquerade as the brilliant detective. But it is not long before Dr. Watson grows to despise the bumbling Kincaid, so he ends their partnership and comes up with a new character modeled after himself. The new creation doesn't go over well with the public though, and the doctor must once again depend on Kincaid--just in time to solve a new mystery. The Without A Clue DVD features interactive menus, English Hard of Hearing subtitles and is aspect ratio 4.3.

With deerstalker cap perched smartly on his head, and Inverness cape hanging smoothly from his frame, master sleuth Sherlock Holmes faces the press with elegant ease. He is about to reveal the clues which eluded Scotland Yard and now enable him to close another baffling case. There is just one small hitch: he is actually Reginald Kincaid (Michael Caine)--a third rate actor with an instatiable thirst, a weakness for women and an aversion to violence. Hired by the real investigative genius, Dr. Watson (Ben Kingsley), to impersonate the mythical detective Sherlock Holmes, he hasn't got a clue how to solve a crime...