Enola Holmes (Film Review)

Story: After her mother goes missing, 16-year-old Enola Holmes, the sister of famed detective Sherlock Holmes, must venture into the big world alone to solve the mystery of her disappearance, living up to her family's famous name and making one for herself in the process.

Review: After a solid century and some change of holding the Holmes spotlight, the time has come for the socially awkward super sleuth Sherlock to step aside and let another solve a mystery in some charmingly clever way. That new star is his younger sister, Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), who now has her own (and possibly first of several) adventure, across which she proves to be the dashing, clever and suitably meta replacement to her older brother that the new generation needs in its 19th-century crime solver.

After modern audiences flocked to see the devil-may-care Sherlock on the big screen (Robert Downey Jr.) and continue to binge the “high-functioning sociopath” of the present-day BBC iteration (Benedict Cumberbatch), the last thing we need is yet another take on the character as he gets prime treatment. Enter Enola with her own origin story (based on the book series from Nancy Springer) away from Sherlock’s exploits, as we see how she learned to fight, analyze, strategize and do everything else a master detective needs to know from her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter). But one day her already mysterious mother goes mysteriously missing, and getting no help from her brothers, Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), the latter wanting to send her to a boarding school so as to become a “proper lady”, Enola sets out on a quest to find her using nothing but her wits and unbreakable spirit to save the day.

The core procedure of Enola’s journey might not be as thrilling as some more classic Holmes tales, but what makes the character and her story stand well on its own two feet is a sheer abundance of energy and charm from both the script and the leading young Brown. Flashbacks to her training with mother are fast-paced and quirky, and much of Enola’s characterization comes via well-executed borrowing from Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s’ FLEABAG, both in the script’s wit and how Enola often breaks the fourth wall to address the audience directly. Much like FLEABAG, the latter isn’t done just so Enola can drop a clever line, but also in how she can convey a variety of emotions with a simple look to the audience when words aren’t needed. In a less talented leading lady this could come off a bit too hammy, but considering Brown’s talent beyond her years, she offers the perfect amount of subtlety and charm to make it her own.

In fact, what makes the movie as admirable and engaging as it is is how writer Jack Thorne and director Harry Bradbeer make every effort to make her a fully fleshed-out character worth sticking with. They are aware that as talented as she is, she’s still young and has miles to go in becoming the hero she’s meant to be. She’s not all-powerful or all intelligent. She can’t deduce a plethora of clues by staring at someone’s fingernails, nor pinpoint pressure points in slow-motion during a fight. Smart, clever, and capable of holding her own? Very much so, but there’s a real effort to also show how out of her depth she is. Take a combat scene, in which she’s able to pull off some cool moves (all while flashbacks of training with her mother are spliced in) and give the baddie (Burn Gorman) a small challenge. But even when she seems confident that her next move will finally put him down, she ends up being very mistaken and gets thrown against a wall or through a wooden door. No punches are pulled, and some may even take notice of a surprising amount of violence. But that makes her victories (sometimes narrow) feel earned rather than handed on a platter. Not only does it make for a more compelling journey, but also makes Brown’s stepping up to the challenge even more impressive.

While this scene (and one more fight scene towards the end) really test her fortitude as a character, there is also no escaping just how vulnerable, intelligent and downright hilarious Enola is. With the fourth wall breaks giving a glimpse into her mind, we get an increasingly better understanding of her deducing skills, her fears, her anguish over losing her mother, and her ever-present wit – mostly as she mocks members of the English upper-class and then-conventional norms regarding femininity. There are many layers to Enola that Thorne’s script is able to work into the story, and while she may always be most known for her work as Eleven on STRANGER THINGS, it’s here that she gets a leading role that shows how able she is to command the screen – making it her best work to date.

But as Enola-centric the movie suitably is, there is the ever-present lingering of a more famous shadow in Cavill’s Sherlock Holmes. He’s more proper and poised compared to more recent Holmes’, but here, he seems to be included more out of obligation than necessity. He becomes a fine mentor to Enola towards the end, but he spends the first hour or so stuck in an easy chair reading a book or newspaper, not being of much use to anything. It may have been more rewarding to have him exist solely in newspaper clippings and via an off-screen mythos — only to show up for real at the end (sequel!) — than to have him just be…around, as he is. But thankfully, this truly is Enola’s tale, and Holmes’ presence moreso made me wish they chopped some scenes of him to shorten the typically long Netflix runtime below the two-hour mark.

There is an additional flaw to its lengthy runtime, and it’s in the central investigation — the disappearance of their mother. The story plays out more like an odyssey and less like an actual mystery, and while it’s very fun following Enola around as she meets new people and switches up costumes, the unfolding of the mystery begins to get muddled relatively quickly. But even if the many characters don't always feel completely necessary, there's no denying they're not mostly fun to watch, especially Bonham Carter in a role that blends both class and kookiness, and Fiona Shaw as the pompous Miss Harrison. True to its roots, it’s a Holmes story, so of course, there needs to be a big case, and like this year’s GET DUKED! there’s a clear aim at the upper-class come the end, but if you’re like me, you’ll get way more out of the development of Enola as a character than the so-so mystery at its core – even when it does admittedly lead to a rather emotional finale.

At first glance, you may not think ENOLA HOLMES is the new Holmes iteration for you. It may not have the sleekness or thrills you crave, and perhaps you may even think you're not the target audience. But when you take into account the fantastic leading performance of Brown and the rest of the supporting cast, the clever, thoughtful script, and some reliably great production values and costumes, you may find ENOLA to be one of the more surprisingly great movies of the year. There's so much here to get younger viewers invested in both the new and classic characters, while a rewarding amount of depth and maturity will provide a fresh twist for even the more ardent Holmes fans. Or, if you're just coming for Cavill's curls, there are plenty of those too.