PG-13 | 2h 3min | Mystery, Drama, Comedy | 2020
“Enola Holmes” opens with a close-up of the back of Enola’s head, bobbing this way and that, with her flowing hair, flying in a sunny breeze, tied almost apologetically by a slender blue ribbon. Next, you see Enola’s delicate hands steering her bicycle’s handlebar. Then, a side shot of her, rocking forward and back, pumping the pedals with her tiny frame. As the camera catches up with her, still cycling straight ahead, she spins her head around, to face you. Half-smiling, she says conspiratorially, “Now, where to begin.”
Harry Bradbeer’s light-hearted film is based on Jack Thorne’s screenplay, which in turn is based on American fantasy-writer Nancy Springer’s “The Enola Holmes Mysteries.”
Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) is the precocious younger sister of legendary “deducer-in-chief,” detective Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill). On her 16th birthday, Enola wakes up in her countryside home to find that her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) has gone missing, leaving behind only a string of clues for her to unravel.
When Sherlock arrives, he’s quietly confident that Enola’s quick wit, keen eye, and sharp inferences are sound. But her other brother, Mycroft (Sam Claflin), is more circumspect and figures that she’s better off in a finishing school, run by the uptight Miss Harrison (Fiona Shaw).
An Entirely Original Character
Neither in style nor substance does Enola mimic the somber aura of the famed 19th-century detective of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Thankfully, Sherlock here barely figures on screen, leaving audiences to contrast the chirpy Enola with the Sherlock in their heads, from decades of reading him, or watching middle-aged men play him.The resulting contrast is nothing short of delightful.
As a smart, sassy girl she ensures that she’s invariably in the thick of action. There’s no Watson telling her story; she’s telling it herself, grippingly. She doesn’t wear narcissism on her sleeve as the Sherlock of earlier films does. But like him she doesn’t suffer fools, or cowards.
Enola’s name spelled backwards reads “alone,” but she doesn’t take it too seriously. She socializes spontaneously, including romantically with the young Viscount Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), a member of the upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords. This is in obvious contrast to Sherlock’s cultivated aloofness, especially from women.
Tewkesbury appears visibly overprotected and effeminate, even alongside the uber-feminine Enola; faintly mirroring the contrast in older films between the cerebral-effete Watson and alpha-sleuth Sherlock. What’s more, Eudoria has homeschooled Enola to excel in several fields. She’s skilled in chess, word-games, archery, tennis, reading, science, exercise, and combat.
A Bit of a Let-Down
Bradbeer breezily introduces Enola’s backstory to hurry the story along. He intersperses scenes with drawings, mock silent-cinema subtitles, flashbacks, and cardboard-cutout props. It’s a lightness of touch that does wonders in the first half, but sadly fades in the second.Brown is easily one of the most exhilarating new faces in film in recent years. She steels (and softens) her voice at will and wields her disarming smile with great comic timing, especially when confiding in the audience mid-scene. She’s let down a bit by stilted dialogue in some sequences, sagging pace in others, and an inexcusably improbable second half.
Brown gleefully shakes free of dozens of Sherlock’s more austere film and TV avatars over the years. Her refreshingly chatty and cheeky Enola is a welcome break from recycled established characters that many franchises increasingly, and lazily, default to.
