Enola Holmes
Year: 2020
Rating: PG-13
Length: 123 minutes / 2.05 hours
When a character like Sherlock Holmes is already written, you do the next best thing: write fanfiction. Enola Holmes (2020) feels like an author-insert fanfiction of the famous detective stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While this would be a mark against any other story, it works here and creates an amusing plot that was fun to watch. Sure, the mystery wasn’t at the level Sherlock Holmes would normally solve, but Enola isn’t necessarily Sherlock. Of course, I don’t know if this story would have worked as well if there wasn’t the tie-in to Sherlock Holmes.
As for the actors, no doubt on retainer from their other Netflix projects, Henry Cavill (The Witcher) is a passable Sherlock but wasn’t given quite enough screen time to really show his talents. The star of the show is definitely Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things), who has certainly shown that she’s not only good at playing a teenager with psychic powers. I could have done with quite a bit less fourth-wall-breaking in this film, though, as I wondered if I was watching a Deadpool movie more often than should be prudent.
While Enola Holmes seems to be the start of a franchise, I wonder if future installments will continue with this movie format or if they’ll start to take after the BBC’s Sherlock format with movie-length episodes. At the very least, Enola Holmes is a cute and charming movie that can stand by itself. That being said, I still have many unanswered questions regarding Enola’s mother. It felt her character arc was incomplete—or at least it could have been better integrated into the story presented here to provide answers linked to the overarching plot.
A charming and fun fanfiction-like story in the Sherlock Holmes universe, I give Enola Holmes 4.0 stars out of 5.
