Enola Holmes is a charming, fun mystery movie with a clever, girl detective and a Victorian world caught in old ways! The film is based on the Enola Holmes Mysteries, the book series by Nancy Springer. The first novel is The Case of the Missing Marquess (2006) and the last one is The Case of the Gypsy Goodbye (2010). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective has been popular since the first novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887). This has continued with the Guy Ritchie directed Sherlock Holmes (2009) movie and the Sherlock series with Benedict Cumberbatch. Enola Holmes is directed by Harry Bradbeer who also directed the comedy drama series Fleabag and Dickensian, the drama series that brings Charles Dickens characters togther. The screenplay adaptation is by Jack Thorne who also wrote the adaptation of The Secret Garden (2020) and co-wrote the drama, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016). It is begun streaming on Netflix on September 23rd.
The beginning has a young girl in a green dress bicycling across the countryside. This is Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) speaking to the audience through the fourth wall! Brown is of course Eleven in Stranger Things on Netflix and also Madison Russell in the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong from Legendary Pictures, both studios involved with the production, Brown is also a producer of this movie. Enola is a spirited and bright character whose narration makes the film fun. We get quick graphics of England in 1884, this is about three years after Sherlock Holmes began his adventures, and introduces her mother who names her Enola. Her mother, Eudoria Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter) loves word games and Enola is an ananym for alone. Carter is a fun genre actress, she is Princess Margaret in the drama series The Crown, it is her role as the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (2015) that is refreshing. This concept of Enola’s name is central to the entire story.
There is such movement in the narrative, Enola on her bicycle, and the shifting in flashbacks and graphics, very fun. Enola notes her father had died and her brothers left home at Ferndell. We can see that Eudoria is responsible for Enola’s training in science, archery, and jujitsu. The parents of Sherlock Holmes were always mysterious, this details his mother, who it seems has all of the skills that he later acquires, but her training of Enola makes the character unique. There are secrets, Enola is reading a book when she overhears a meeting with her mother and other ladies, she hears strange words during the meeting. Eudoria sees her daughter and closes the door. In a mystery, everything is important. Enola woke up on her sixteenth birthday to find that her mother has mysteriously disappeared. She listlessly occupies her time, but does not immediately work out why her mother has gone and the strange meeting. Mrs. Lane (Claire Rushbrook), the housekeeper, tries to help Enola giving her gifts from her mother. Rushbrook was in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). Enola finds a tiny book, The Language of Flowers, and picture cards of flowers. Her bicycle ride ends with Enola taking a fall.
She gets up to pedal over to the train station. She is there to meet her brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock, Mycroft first appeared in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter” (1893). Enola recounts her brother’s skills, the “famous detective”, and they both walk up. Mycroft (Sam Claflin) in a suit with mustache and top hat and Sherlock (Henry Cavill) in a less formal brown suit without his Inverness cape and deerstalker cap. Claflin was in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011). Cavill might be known as Superman in Justice League (2017), but he was also in The Tudors. This is a slight departure from the classic image of Sherlock Holmes which is fine, but there is no Watson for an unexplained reason and Holmes is slighted by the story’s focus on Enola. They walk past her until Enola calls out to them. The brothers have not seen their sister in some time, but Sherlock’s deduction seems poor. They take a carriage to Ferndell Hall. Sherlock does work out what has happened to his mother. Mycroft picks up one of her books, The Subjection of Women, and has contempt for her feminism. Another important point of the story.
Both brothers discover that Enola was taught by Eudoria. Over a game of pool which Enola overhears, Mycroft is clear to be the stuffy, government official, and he wants to put his sister in a boarding school. Miss Harrison (Fiona Shaw) from the boarding school arrives in her automobile. Shaw played Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter movies. She of course is strict and formal not a great teacher for what Mycroft calls his “wild child” sister. The problem of course is that Enola has always spent her lift at Ferdell Hall and has no time with the outside world. Enola finds that Sherlock will not take her side and ends up as the ward of Mycroft who is the older brother. She finds that her mother has given her a secret message to “look in my chrysanthemums.” There is a vase of chrysanthemums in Eudoria’s room and also paintings of them. Enola finds money and a note “our future is up to us.” She takes Sherlock’s boyhood clothes and bicycles to another train station. Enola sees a family, Lady Twekesbury (Hattie Morahan) with Sir Whimbel Tewkesbury, and The Dowager (Frances de la Tour) searching for her son. A mysterious man in a bowler hat, Linthorn (Burns Gorman) also on the train. Gorman was Owen Harper in Torchwood and also in Legendary Pictures’ Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018).
The train chugs through the countryside when Mycroft discovers that she has left with a doll in her bed with her cariacture sketch of him. Again, Sherlock is not too bright allowing his sister to escape, it would have been better if he watched her leave. In her passenger carriage, Enola discovers a sneeze coming from the travel bag on the top shelf. A boy tries to cut himself free of it, but falls. He introduces himself as Vicount Twekesbury, the Marquess of Belwether (Louis Partridge). The actor was in the fantasy film, Pan (2015), and plays Peter Pan in the The Lost Girls film next year. He is a mirror to Enola, a runaway from his family, Enola is annoyed by him, and of course discovers that he becomes important in her adventures. Enola knows that he is being pursued by “the man in the brown bowler hat.” She goes back to stop Linthorn from throwing Twekesbury out of the train! Their adventures lead them to London, encountering Edith, a woman connected to Eudoria's group (Susie Wokoma), Lestrade (Adeel Akhtar), and uncovering the mystery of Twekesbury and the disappearance of Eudoria Holmes! The narration and adventures is funny enough to lighten the picture. Enola Holmes is fun, good pacing, with likeable leads and good adventure!
Four Chrysanthemums out of Five!
#EnolaHolmes, #HarryBradbeer, #MillieBobbyBrown, #LouisPartridge
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