Word: freude
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...concerned colleague and friend Dr. Watson decides Holmes must be cured of his addiction. Using Moriarty as bait, he lures Holmes to the house of a Viennese doctor who has become notable through his success in curing patients of drug addiction. There, Sherlock Holmes and his historical contemporary Sigmund Freud, the world's two greatest investigative minds, join forces to unravel a mystery. While undergoing treatment for his addiction, Holmes pursues the case of Freud's beautiful ex-patient Lola Devereaux (who has been abducted). Freud, meanwhile, seeks to explain the enigma of Sherlock Holmes himself...
...conjunction of two such legendary figures is a wonderful premise for a film. Freud's place in history has reached such dimensions that he is certainly as much of a mythic character as the fictional Holmes. Their pooling of talents promises to be a mystery buff's paradise. Each man in his own way dispels the mysterious: Holmes reveals the order in the rational, objective world while Freud illuminates the power of the irrational in the sphere of the subconscious. The cooperation of the two great detective minds in cracking the case of the missing Lola Devereaux and Freud...
...movie's opening, a demented Holmes speeds across Europe in pursuit of Moriarty. He leaves London's Victoria Station with its throngs of people and loud, smoke-bellowing engines and passes into the gleaming green Austrian countryside. With his bloodhound Toby on the scent of Moriarty, he rushes into Freud's house where the doctor is already expecting him. The detective casts a comprehensive glance over the interior of Freud's study and, knowing nothing about Freud, is able to reel off all the particulars of the doctor's life. Holmes's display of his astounding deductive power...
Nevertheless, the slow, deliberate pace of the movie leaves one gasping for oxygen. The whimsical intellectuality of the movie rapidly becomes cloying. The mystery's conclusion--where the last piece in the puzzle is fit into place--is a little too cleverly predictable. Through hypnosis, Freud finds that the secret of Holmes' personality and the reason for his cocaine addiction is explained by a childhood trauma. What else could one expect in a movie about Freud as precious as this one has become, but a reenactment of the Oedipal drama...
...Seven Percent Solution. Laurence Olivier is wonderful in his brief appearance as Moriarty. In the very pettiness of his personality there are the seeds for the drug-crazed Holmes's perception of him as a titanic power of evil. Alan Arkin portrays a surprisingly endearing and benign Sigmund Freud with none of the brooding, neurotic quality one might expect. Arkin's Freud is all kindliness and sanity. Vanessa Redgrave is an appropriately haunting and romantic Lola Devereaux and Nicol Williamson makes a fine Sherlock Holmes, the civilized British gentleman with a passion for fair play at all times. Even...