According to Guinness
World Records, there is not a single literary character who has been
portrayed as frequently as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s eminent detective Sherlock
Holmes. Greats such as Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael
Cane, Robert Downey Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, and even John Cleese have left
their mark on the character, and with each depiction it seems like it becomes
harder and harder to differentiate one’s performance from the last person to
step into the pipe and deerstalker. This oversaturation (which is exacerbated
by the fact that Sherlock Holmes is a public domain character) means the
detective’s universe is ripe for many a reinterpretation. Disney made the
character a mouse, Cumberbatch portrayed him as a modern-day “high-functioning
sociopath,” and now Netflix and Henry Cavill have turned him into something
unheard of: a supporting character. Enola Holmes is
instead the story of Sherlock and Mycroft’s younger sister, a brilliant
detective in her own right, and her attempt to find their missing mother. It is
a light, bubbly film that is a whole lot of fun despite some pacing issues and
a couple of heavy-handed moral lessons.
Millie
Bobby Brown stars as the titular Enola,
and she is every bit as brilliant here as a Victorian tomboy as she is when
playing a psychic runaway with a taste for Eggos. She emanates charisma and
youthful energy, making it impossible not to smile whenever she turns to the
camera to say something silly and/or clever. This not only gives Enola a way to vocalize her thoughts while
alone, but also makes the viewer feel like they are right there on the
adventure with her. Accompanying Brown the entire way is an upbeat score,
amusing visuals, and an excellent supporting cast. But the movie is not without
its flaws.
One
of the things that struck me was how little the Sherlock Holmes mythology
seemed to matter to the overall story. Henry Cavill’s Sherlock barely has
anything to do, Mycroft is reduced to a strawman anti-feminist, Watson doesn’t
seem to exist (or at least has not come into the picture yet), and I get the
feeling that the movie (and the novels it was based on) only had the Holmes
connection so they had some built-in name recognition when released. The plot
is decent enough, although the fast and fun story definitely loses a lot of
steam when Enola decides to help a
new friend with a problem that is not relevant at all to the main plot until
the very end. The life lessons the movie attempts to teach on the way are also
a bit generic… be yourself, don’t let others decide who you should be, etc.,
and the feministic overtones are welcome if a bit overdone (one scene is almost
entirely devoted to telling Sherlock how good he has it as a white male). I am,
however, most definitely not the target audience for this film, the
lessons are important, and I certainly won’t begrudge teenage
girls another kick-ass feminine hero to look up to and learn from in the
meantime.
Overall, Enola Holmes is a fun family
film with a little for everyone. So fire up that Netflix account and get that
game afoot.
Enola Holmes is now
available on Netflix.
This
review was first published in The Keizertimes on November 6th, 2020. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/
Hindsight: I guess the mythos does matter to the story a bit, because Enola needs to step out of the shadows of someone. Her trying to forge her own identity separate from her legendary brother is part of her journey. Completely unrelated, but I just realized that "Enola" is an actual name, and not just a dumb made up one. The Enola Gay was the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Pretty sure she's not named after the plane, but after a quick Wikipedia dip I found out that the plane was named after the pilot's mother. So it is a real name for a person. Interesting.
The review is fine. Intro is a bit long, and I still feel like I was a bit too critical of how the movie handled life lessons. Oh well.
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