Directed by Harry Bradbeer, Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) has a charmed life, living in a big country house with her mother, learning and playing all day long. On her sixteenth birthday, she awakes to find her mother has left her, with nothing more than an innocuous birthday present in her absence. Enola’s brothers, Mycroft (Sam Claflin) and Sherlock (Henry Cavill) return home to investigate, and to decide what is to become of Enola Holmes. It appears that boarding school is on the cards, but Enola’s free spirit and independence lead her to escape to London in the hopes of locating her mother herself. Along the way, she becomes unexpectedly entangled in a murder plot, of Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), a boy who would be an influential Lord, and Enola takes it upon herself to assist her new friend.
There’s a certain energy in the first and third acts that’s hard to deny. Initially, when Enola is talking to the camera, my first thought was, ‘don’t overdo it’; ha, but when it becomes obvious that the fourth-wall breaks will be a feature for the entire movie, I chose to embrace it, and I ended up really liking it. At one point, Enola even looks down the barrel of the camera and asks the audience of the mystery; ‘well, do you have any ideas?’ – I don’t, I didn’t. The film is bright, and it’s hard not to be reminded of Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone, especially on the train, and reminisce upon similar teen adventures of high quality. What Millie Bobby Brown provides for Enola Holmes is excellent; charming and spunky – I would happily welcome a sequel just due to the movie having cast the perfect young actress for the role. Enola is a much more emotionally strong character for Brown than what we’re used to seeing from her in Stranger Things, and its wonderful for her (or, more accurately, us) to be discovering her range. I’m suddenly excited for her future.
And yet, the movie’s heavy-handed discourse on feminism, and somewhat contrived cause-and-effect, leave me in the cold. It was around the time the hapless hunter-killer is able to track down and identify Enola Holmes, now in her womanly disguise, in a secluded lane in all of London, that the movie started losing me fast – the movie aims to explain how the hunter came to be there later on, but it’s still a stretch. But movie, can you seriously draw parallels between early twentieth century England and now, for women and their suffering? It’s just unfair; in no way is the modern day as strict a place for women than it was back then. Hilariously, the movie still includes modern-day standards, casting a black man as police chief, and allowing a woman to run an establishment training martial arts – without completely delving into the facts around turn-of-the-century colonial racism, I just don’t think you can pick on the times if you’re not going to accurately portray them, which indicates to me that the female hardship we see here is to make a point about womanhood in the modern day. You may be thinking I’m overplaying the importance of the theme of feminism, but I don’t think so, when it’s completely obvious who the bad people are in a detective story by their political leanings towards ‘the old ways’ of England. If the movie had spared a sharpened political point of view, I think Enola Holmes could have absolutely served as a fantastic role-model icon for young ladies all by herself, and probably still will. But even moments where Enola, who has been a pillar of strength for the entire movie, cries uncontrollably when yelled at by her awful big brother, are just off, played for maximum emotional impact – tears down a stoic or dismayed face I might have believed.
At times, it appears Enola’s mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), might be setting up Enola with a sink-or-swim scenario by leaving her, but it gets out of hand rapidly, and rather cruelly, considering Enola must navigate London by herself, and avoid ending up trapped in a boarding school. Characters keep reminding Enola that her mother has abandoned her, and they kind’ve have a point, but Enola is adamant that her mother has her back for the longest time. I was really glad when Enola comes around, and Eudoria apologises for the situation she left, instead of the movie just giving us an emotional swell and happy reunion at the pure sight of mother’s return. Enola does prove mighty capable on her own, excelling with the smarts of her famous brother and the wit of her mother. But fairly, she does change into a little SOB when bothered; she says something like “you’re a man when I say you are” to Tewkesbury, when the two are leaving the flower market. And she says something like, ‘I don’t think [your father was murdered], I know [he was]’ – you don’t know shit, Enola. I’m just glad their little spark of romance only blossomed as far as handholding by the end of the movie, for Tewkesbury’s sake, or he might have found his testicles in a mason jar. It may just be an immature quirk of her character, but I hope the movie isn’t in support of that behaviour from Enola on a grander scale; forthright and arrogant are two different things.
More than a few times, this movie rubbed me the wrong way and I just suppose it isn’t for me. But if I overlook the downsides, Enola Holmes is a production with tone and character completely capable of creating a good and lively movie. Henry Cavill’s Sherlock Holmes is a little bit wooden, but that may’ve been deliberate to aid Enola Holmes to shine. This is certainly an origin story for Enola, and if my voice is welcome in society (with my willy between my legs), by the time the sequel comes out, I look forward to Enola Holmes’ next adventure.
3.0
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