I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.
— Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Man with the Twisted Lip”
I remembered Dr. Watson’s listing of my brother’s accomplishments: scholar, chemist, superb violinist, expert marksman, swordsman, singlestick fighter, pugilist, and brilliant deductive thinker.
Then I formed a mental list of my own accomplishments: able to read, write, and do sums; find birds’ nests; dig worms and catch fish; and, oh yes, ride a bicycle.
— Enola Holmes, Susan Springer’s The Case of the Missing Marquess
Susan Springer’s Enola Holmes novels are an entertaining dose of female empowerment for tweens, based on a simple but clever premise: what if Master Sherlock had a heretofore unacknowledged younger sister who shared his bullheaded devotion to mystery-solving? Merging fairy tale elements with the sensible, relatable perspective of a precocious but untried 14-year old, Springer’s novels aren’t great literature, but they make for fun and fast reading, with most of the fun stemming from Enola’s attempts to disprove her snooty older brother’s low opinion of her. Now Netflix has teamed up with Legendary Pictures to wheel out the first of what they surely hope is a long-running movie series based on the books.
Little expense has been spared for the movie, with the starry likes of Henry Cavill (as an improbably buff, hunky Sherlock) and Helena Bonham-Carter (doing her usual quirky thing as Enola’s mother) in the cast. Tracing the skeleton of the book’s plot, Enola Holmes kicks off with the same intriguing hook: Mrs. Holmes has disappeared from the family’s ancestral manor without even a word of farewell, and Enola, confused and bereft, vows to track her down, with the help of several riddles her mother left behind (which usually just involve word scrambles). Less supportive are older brothers Sherlock and Mycroft (Sam Claflin) — Sherlock is too emotionally detached to truly understand what Enola is going through, while the officious, conservative Mycroft is hell-bent on enrolling Enola in a boarding school and taming her for polite society. Soon enough Enola is on the run from her siblings, in pursuit of her mother, and getting wrapped up in the strange but not incredibly difficult case of a missing would-be lord (Louis Partridge).
Springer’s story is a slight affair, just long enough to fit comfortably within a novella format. To fill out the runtime, screenwriter Jack Thorne (HBO’s His Dark Materials) gussies things up with a more involved reason for Mrs. Holmes’ disappearance, more repartee between Enola and the missing young Lord Tewkesbury (who’s impudent and cute, naturally), more pointed commentary on being a female in a man’s world, and more emphasis on Enola’s all-around proficiency as a woman of action, from archery to jiujitsu. Springer’s Enola is a talented but relatively untried teen, dogged by doubt and none too sure of herself when forced to relocate to wild and raucous London. The Enola of the film hints at some of these traits, but more often than not she’s a gleaming paragon of girl power, fully capable of equaling Sherlock at his own deductive game.
To which we say: Why not? It’s not the first time we’ve been given a wish-fulfillment fantasy and aspirational figure, and even if things tend to come a bit too easily for our can-do, do-it-all heroine in the movie, she has plenty of obstacles to overcome, whether it be a finishing jiujitsu corkscrew move that she can’t get quite right, or disentangling herself from a prison-like boarding school existence. Too bad that the film built around Enola, handsomely mounted as it is, isn’t as smart as it tries to be. Director Harry Bradbeer gooses the pace by importing some of the tics he brought to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, including the main character’s tendency to address the audience directly, as well as a host of whiplash transitions, cutesy intertitles, and even some random bits of animation. It all adds up to a lot of flourishes that are busy but not especially witty. The same could be said for Thorne’s script, which bogs itself down setting up mysteries and solutions that don’t involve much in the way of actual deduction or surprise. Most will see the beats coming from a few miles away: when the haughty headmistress of Enola’s boarding school (Fiona Shaw) shows up in a bouncy motorized vehicle, can there be any doubt that Enola will appropriate it at a crucial moment? Will Enola’s inability to perform her finishing jiujitsu move come into play when she confronts the dastardly Linthorn (Burn Gorman) at the film’s climax? You can bet a dozen hounds from Baskerville it will.
Still, plotting was never the key feature of the original Holmes stories. Arthur Conan Doyle specialized in high Victorian drama, and took the most pleasure in plopping his eminently rational hero into irrational encounters with colorful thieves, killers and cultured ladies in distress. Try as they might, Bradbeer and Thorne are only fitfully successful at creating a similar atmosphere of merry intrigue. The supporting actors are a particularly mixed bag: as a potential love interest for Enola, Partridge is a likably feisty presence, and Carter’s clipped line deliveries at least suggest intelligence and fire, even as most of her dialogue reads like self-help maxims (example: “There are two paths you can take. Yours, or the path others choose for you”). But the actors playing the Holmes brothers disappoint, particularly Cavill’s Sherlock — Enola may yearn to live up to her brother’s reputation, but it’s a mystery why she would want to live up to Cavill’s portrayal of the genius detective as a soft-spoken, quizzical lunk.
Which brings us to Millie Bobby Brown’s Enola, the primary reason Enola Holmes has any pull. In Stranger Things, Brown was always the most knowing and mature of the young cast members, and as Enola, no longer needing to carry the weight of several parallel universes on her shoulders, she gets to show off her full charm. The script may occasionally paint her as an “I can do anything better than you” superhero, but she displays remarkably little arrogance or preciousness, even with all the asides to the camera. Ranging all over the map from impudent to bewildered, determined, bemused and emotionally spent, her performance speaks far more eloquently than the rest of the production. Doyle’s Holmes once said to Watson, “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light.” if Enola Holmes is a somewhat sluggish piece of entertainment that struggles for luminosity, Brown is a shining light all by herself, suggesting that better things lie ahead for her, if not for Enola as a franchise. ■
