Enola Holmes Review
Netflix’s 2020 Enola Holmes dares to ask the question, “What if Sherlock Holmes had a little sister who also did stuff sometimes?” I haven’t read the YA novels by Nancy Springer that the film is based on, but I have read every Sherlock Holmes story that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote (you’d be amazed how much reading you can do when you spend all your lunches alone your first year of high school!), so I’m confidently informed on the original source material.
Mystery runs in my family, too, you don’t see me bragging about it.
So, Enola (which is “Alone” backwards, as the film tells us about a half-dozen times) Holmes grows up with her mother Eudoria (which means “of good gifts,” as long as we’re paying attention to names) at Holmes’ estate in the country, learning to fight, read, and ignore Victorian social roles. Eudoria goes missing, and Enola is determined to find her so that she can avoid boarding school foisted upon her by her eldest brother, Mycroft, and the good-natured neglect of Sherlock. Politics, attempted murder, and fancy clothes ensue.
I think I enjoyed every actor in the film. Henry Cavill is having fun drifting from scene to scene as Sherlock Holmes, though this isn’t Holmes at his brightest. He’s consistently just kind of vibing in the scene: preferring to smile distantly instead of investigating or putting much effort into anything… but it works. Helena Bonham-Carter is fun as Eudoria. And Millie Bobby Brown (of Stranger Things fame) is great as a protagonist exploring the world for the first time. Even the floppy-haired kid playing the young lord with the stupid name seemed to know what he was doing.
He looks like he’s doing a lousy Oscar Wilde cosplay, but really he’s fine.
I also give the film props for situating Enola Holmes’ story in the context of the slow growth of feminism in England. Enola’s ambitions to be free and pursue her own interests (and mother) fly in the face of the social expectations of the time. It gives a fun challenge to push against.
Unfortunately, the dialogue in this movie just doesn’t quite work. In a coming-of-age film, I can live with one, MAYBE two, lines of dialogue telling someone to “figure out who they are.” I swear this movie does it at least six times, each as a very blunt THIS IS THE POINT OF THE FILM line. The baddies are one-dimensionally bad. “You’ll thank me for this,” says the mean teacher no one likes after slapping a child… Nuance? What nuance? Sexism is as rampant as you might expect, but it’s also very, very LOUD. Characters shout “stupid girl!” like they’re trying to shout a Youtube comments section to their friends on the other side of a busy highway. It’s… a lot.
Perhaps my least favorite bit of the movie involves suddenly dropping a plot thread about violent government overthrow. It’s not a red herring, made to mislead the audience from the real mystery. Nor, as far as I can tell, was it part of the books. It’s literally just a murderous conspiracy that Enola admits is very concerning and then… forgets about. Then we move on. I even waited for an after-credits scene to see if this was the lingering mystery that the inevitable sequel will talk about. Nope. Don’t worry about the violent overthrow. That will sort itself out. Let’s talk about flowers some more.
It’s a bummer that this movie isn’t better. Again, the actors are solid, the concept is solid. I particularly like the idea of Enola solving mysteries by coming at them from a more human perspective than Sherlock does. That would paint their skills as complementary, not competitive. But truthfully, the movie competently executes one mystery, ignores another, and just skates by on some pretty shallow observations about sexism and “finding yourself.” Maybe the books are better. Maybe the sequel will be better.
It’s on Netflix. 3 shouting misogynists out of 5.