I like to think Gene Wilder was probably a smart and funny guy in real life. While not a huge fan of his, he usually brought something to the screen that somehow conveyed warmth while simultaneously seeming a tad aloof. It was like he usually was thinking of a very clever and cutting remark but was too kind to make such a devastating remark to a person.
So I was taken aback by how largely unfunny I found his directorial debut, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, especially since he also wrote it. Then there’s the cast, which reads like a cross-pollination of the stock companies of Mel Brooks and Richard Lester: Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Felman, Dom DeLuise, Leo McKern, Roy Kinnear, Thorley Walters. It almost takes a certain preserve talent to go so wrong with a cast like this—like the Midas touch in reverse.
Supposedly, Wilder had wanted Brooks to direct. I don’t know if Brooks had read the script before declining, but he wisely chose to not get involved. The reason he gave was he didn’t feel could do justice to material written by somebody else. That’s a pretty smart dodge.
The plot centers around theft of a scroll that, if it were to fall into enemy hands, would result in a devastating war. The nature of that document is never revealed. All we need to know is it is sought by Sherlock’s archnemesis Moriarty (McKern). Also involved in this intrigue is Kahn, who is being blackmailed.
Investigating this intrigue is Sherlock’s previously undisclosed brother. Not Mycroft, but his younger one: Sigerson (Wilder). Holmes and Watson had deceived Moriarty into thinking they had left on a train, when they are still London, with Holmes nudging Sigerson in the right direction at times. It’s almost like he’s giving his young brother full credit for an effort he to which he greatly contributed, unbeknownst to others. I’m not entirely sure why he does this, nor did I really care.
Sigerson is paired with a Scotland Yard detective (Feldman) who has a “photographic sense of hearing”. He has a recurring, unfunny quirk where he has to hit himself upside the head to initiate a recitation from memory. If interrupted before a recitation is completed, he has to hit himself and start from the beginning again. Huh.
Perhaps the only recurring bit I found funny in the film is how Kahn’s character is always lying, even about little things of no consequence, and how Wilder always calls her out on it. One of the few times I laughed was when she claims her father is the head of a particular branch of a bank and Wilder says that can’t be, because that bank has no such branch. When she asks him how he could know that, he barks, “BECAUSE…YOU’RE…A…LIAR!”
There is less slapstick than I thought there would be. You know how, in pre-20th-century England, they used to a have large objects instead of print signs to advertise a business? Is this case, Wilder ends up wielding a giant boot from such a place and uses it to fight off Kinnear, who is wielding a giant hand. I found it funnier than I’m sure it reads here. Heck, I don’t even know who will find this even as mildly humorous as I did if they watched it.
Unfortunately, the majority of what is apparently meant to funny is so bad that I can only hope it was improvised. DeLuise (who can be good, but rarely is) is notably irritating here, and I didn’t know what to think of such bits as him dry-humping a leather office chair. But really, hardly anybody comes out of this looking good, especially when most of the characters are little more than collections of quirks and tics. In particular, I have no idea what McKern’s shtick is, but it is so curious that I don’t know how to describe it.
Some scenes forced me to consider how Wilder has written things that he himself would be doing in the film. I thought this during one scene where he firmly grabs one of Kahn’s boobs for a long time. I can at least understand why he wrote that for himself to do. I’m more confused by the scene where he and Feldman find themselves in full formal wear, except for their exposed asses. That they will end up grabbing each other’s buttocks is very odd.
One odd scene I wanted to call out is one where Wilder is wearing an outfit that immediately brought to my mind one of his from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. This had to have been intentional, as the scene will involve chocolate to a large extent. The result is just nothing more than a callback to a better film he was in.
In it’s most tolerable moments, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother will elicit little more than chuckles, such as when Feldman is wearing a sandwich board advertising the sale of red herrings. Unfortunately, it is large insufferable, such as when he joins Wilder and Kahn in a deliberately insipid musical number about doing a dance called the kangaroo hop. The only reason this isn’t the worst Sherlock Holmes comedy I have seen is not because I have yet to see Will Farrell and John C. Reily’s movie, but because I have seen Dudley More and Peter Cook’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Dir: Gene Wilder
Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray