In addition to the prolific source material written by Arthur Conan Doyle, the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of the “World’s Greatest Consulting Detective” have been well documented through decades of film and television programs. We’ve been well-trained in the tropes associated with Sherlock Holmes through an extensive regimen of stories, plots, twists, embellishments, exaggerations, and spin-offs. Keeping this in mind when judging Harry Bradbeer’s Enola Holmes against the pantheon of Holmesian fiction both printed and filmed, you could do much worse. But perhaps unsurprisingly, you could also do much better.
Based on the novels of author Nancy Springer, Enola Holmes puts a YA spin on the saga of the Holmes clan by adding a precocious younger sister to the mix, played by Millie Bobby Brown. The junior Holmes finds herself in trouble after her mother (Helena Bonham Carter) mysteriously vanishes and her older, more famous brothers Sherlock and Mycroft (Henry Cavill and Sam Claflin) prove far too stuffy, self-centered, and archaically traditional for her liking. Enola, naturally, proves herself a formidable detective in her own right by not only taking up the search for dear mum but also navigating a murderous plot to assassinate a young Marquess (Louis Partridge).
On its surface, the mystery works well and Brown is more than up to the task of handling her role as inheritor of the Holmes moniker, but Bradbeer’s constant fourth wall-breaking approach to storytelling becomes an irritating distraction rather than a necessary update. I have no objections to modern or stylish approaches to trope-ladden and familiar stories, but when those approaches become gaudy and overused, somebody needs to step in to say “enough.”
I must admit, though, that over the course of the film’s two hours, my general annoyance with the approach was warmed over by the likeability of the actors and their plights. Typically, YA stories lose me with vapid oversimplifications and watered-down, overused character “types,” but Enola Holmes mostly avoids this by setting the story in an unconventional time and place. The political and cultural upheaval of Victorian England is rife with possibilities for telling compelling stories that can easily draw direct allegorical lines to modern problems faced by teens and young adults. Seen through a contemporary lens, 1880s England may seem antiquated, but, at the time, it was considered a marvelous age full of new and exciting scientific discoveries, radical thinking, and changing attitudes. It’s easy to overlook “meet cute” and other clichéd moments when there’s also bomb-throwing, jiu-jitsu fighting bad-ass suffragettes to balance things out. It may not be historically accurate in the strictest of senses, but it’s fun.
Enola Holmes is a good start in what I hope is a string of successful films. Its problems don’t sink it (and likely won’t matter in the slightest to its target audience), but there is room for improvement. With some of the bugs worked out, this is the type of franchise that could follow kids into adulthood, as long as care is taken to ensure that the problems and conflicts addressed follow along with those of its demographic as they age into an ever-changing and sometimes terrifying world.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.