Enola Holmes 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
The first Enola Holmes film fascinated me. Based on a series of YA novels first published in 2007, the original was a sweet reimagining of the classic Sherlock Holmes canon, in which Millie Bobby Brown gave a charismatic performance as the eponymous moppet with a genius intellect. That lively energy, however, is absent from the sequel, which retains many of the trappings of the first film but strives more to lay the foundation for a franchise than weave a coherent mystery.
The sequel recasts Brown as Enola, Sherlock’s younger sister who is now the owner of her own detective agency. Being based in Victorian England, she is quickly dismissed by clients who would like to work with her more famous brother (Henry Cavill). But when a young girl (a precocious Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) asks for help finding her adopted older sister, Enola Holmes looks into the camera to let us know the game is back on.
The story that follows contains simultaneous mysteries, themes of feminism, a real-life working-class revolt, a love story, and several additions from the Holmes canon. At just over two hours, all of these storylines leave the sequel feeling overcrowded, with too often the actual detective work being resolved by improbable leaps in logic and action sequences. It has the look and feel of a traditional Sherlock story but little of the substance.
Speaking of Sherlock, he plays a more central role in this story where he plays a supportive but distant older brother to Enola. Cavill’s Sherlock is more like Basil Rathbone than Benedict Cumberbatch, absentmindedly puffing on a pipe and looking thoughtful while gazing at a board with more red strings than the Always Sunny meme. It doesn’t completely steal the spotlight from Brown, but the film’s preoccupation with reinterpreting various parts of the established Holmes canon proves distracting.
As with the original, Enola Holmes 2’s strongest moments come as it focuses on the exploits of Brown’s titular heroine. Brown retains Enola’s infectious charisma for the sequel, and frequently addresses the camera with witty, fourth-wall-breaking comments about her predicament (though those little asides, and the little animated bits that accompany them, slowly fade as the film progresses). She’s especially fun working with her mother — bomb-throwing suffragette Eudoria Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter) — who earns a lot more screen time than she actually gets.
Enola’s former love interest, Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), also returns. Enola Holmes 2 uses Tewkesbury as a vehicle to swap typical movie gender roles, with Tewkesbury teaching Enola to dance at a ball and attract attention, and Enola retaliates by teaching Tewkesbury how to fight. Tewkesbury also ties into Enola Holmes 2’s serious portrayal of good government and social progress, making it feel more like a Parks and Recreation episode than anything else.
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In fairness, it can be educational. A key plot point revolves around a real 19th-century health crisis that weaves into the earliest days of the labor movement, among various other themes. But like so many other elements of Enola Holmes 2, his social commentary is undercut by the fact that he goes out of his way to tell us exactly where he stands on a given topic, making otherwise powerful moments feel edited.
All of this weighs on the previously lively, welcome reinterpretation of the Holmes canon. It spends a lot of time laying the groundwork for another sequel, introducing several new characters in the final act that will presumably have roles in a hypothetical Enola Holmes 3. With several more books’ worth of material to draw from, and Brown raking in credit from another producer for the sequel, it seems a third film is on the way sooner rather than later.
When it happens, I just hope it takes more after the original than it does its sequel. At its best, Enola Holmes can be a beautiful mother-daughter film – a fresh take on the Holmes canon with a strong social conscience and a cast full of intelligent and charismatic women. Hopefully the follow-up Netflix is planning can live up to that potential, because we need stories like this more than ever.
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