Word: wildering
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...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...
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...
...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...