Without a Clue

1988 British comedy film by Thom Eberhardt

Without a Clue is a 1988 British comedy film directed by Thom Eberhardt and starring Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. It is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories but, in this version, the roles are reversed: Dr. John Watson is the brilliant detective, while "Sherlock Holmes" is an actor hired to pose as the detective so that Watson can protect his reputation as a physician.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional creation, the central character in a series of short stories written by Dr John Watson and published in The Strand Magazine. Watson conceives of Holmes as a way for him to solve crimes incognito, as he views detective work as merely a hobby and does not want the attention it would bring to his medical career. However, when the reading public demand to actually see "Holmes", Watson hires a washed up stage actor, Reginald Kincaid, to play the part. Kincaid slowly learns to memorise the doctor's exacting, detailed instructions every step of the way and manages to convince the public that he is indeed "Holmes". After a major case, Kincaid oversteps his boundaries with Watson, who fires him. Realising that he should have been honest from the start, Watson decides to write Holmes out of his stories and replace him with a new character, "The Crime Doctor", based on himself. Unfortunately, the idea of a physician rather than a detective solving crimes is rejected by the public, and when Watson attempts to investigate a crime of arson at a paper warehouse, he quickly finds that no one is willing to share information or co operate with his inquiries. Soon after, the British government contacts Watson, requesting that "Holmes" solve a major theft. A government mint recently reported the disappearance of printing plates for £5 banknotes, with the printing supervisor, Peter Giles, having gone missing on the night of the robbery. The counterfeiting of these notes would cause the inevitable collapse of the economy if they were allowed to circulate. Watson is therefore forced to hunt down a drunken Kincaid and clean him up before accepting the case. Scotland Yard's Inspector Lestrade is jealous of "Holmes" and refuses to let him or Watson participate in the official investigation. Rather than relying on the regular police, therefore, Watson turns to the twelve year old street urchin, Wiggins, the leader of a street gang that he calls the "Baker Street Irregulars", paying them to keep an eye on people and locate evidence. One line of enquiry leads Watson to the printer's daughter, Leslie, whom he and the womanising "Holmes" invite back to their quarters to recover from the shock of false evidence of her father's death. Watson and "Holmes" discover that the master criminal Professor James Moriarty is behind the theft and find him on the docks while receiving a consignment of printing ink. Watson is apparently killed and "Holmes" is left to rely on himself, using everything he has learned to solve the case. The trail takes him to an abandoned theatre where the forgeries are being printed. There, he discovers that Watson is still alive after all and the two team up to defeat Moriarty for good and recover the missing plates. In the process, Leslie turns out to be an imposter in the pay of Moriarty. When they return to 221B Baker Street, "Holmes" announces to a reception committee of reporters that he intends to retire and gives full credit to the qualities of his "partner" Watson. For his part, Watson assures the public that, far from this being the end, the team of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson will continue their detective work from now on as friends.

Written by Gary Murphy and Larry Strawther, two devoted Sherlockians, the film originally had the working titles The Imposter of Baker Street and Sherlock and Me. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.

Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four on the grounds that the "amusing premise" that Holmes is in fact a third rate actor hired by Watson to play the role is not enough to carry the film. This was echoed by The Monthly Film Bulletins judgement that "If this premise were to be workable, it would require the casting of an actor who could actually pass as the genuine Holmes. As it is, we are simply given a buffoon." Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, stated that Without A Clue was "an appallingly witless sendup of the Sherlock Holmes–Dr. Watson stories". Variety conceded that the film "generates a few laughs and smiles, but of a markedly mild nature and most of them provoked by the shrewdly judged antics of the two stars." The film won the 1989 Special Jury Prize at the Festival du Film Policier de Cognac.