Enola Holmes is probably going to go down as one of the most disappointing and frustrating movies of 2020 for me. The reason for this is mostly because I would have considered this a fantastic movie if just a few key things were changed. The thing about a movie like Enola Holmes is that the things I liked about it, I REALLY liked. But it just winds up getting dragged down by some core problems, and it keeps it from being what it could have been. I actually still consider it worth watching, and I’d still be down to watch the inevitable sequels that come from this, but I do just need to lament that this movie is not what it could have been.

So first let’s back up and talk about what the movie is even about. As I’m sure you can deduct from the title alone, the movie shares some affiliation with the Sherlock Holmes franchise. The twist here is that our protagonist is Enola Holmes, Sherlock’s younger teen sister. With a considerable age gap between the siblings, Sherlock and Mycroft both left home when Enola was very young, and so Enola doesn’t really have any memories with them. Instead, Enola’s only real close relationship was with her mother, who taught her everything she knows. Now, at the age of 16, Enola wakes up one day to find her mother has mysteriously disappeared. She calls on the help of her brothers, but soon realizes she’s going to have to go on her own journey to solve the mystery.

Sounds like a really great premise, right? I thought so too. However, one thing that the Sherlock Holmes franchise has always been known for is crafting really intriguing mysteries, and giving some really satisfying and unorthodox conclusions to those mysteries that only the world’s greatest detective could figure out. Enola Holmes does not have this, unfortunately. There is a sub-plot introduced pretty quickly where Enola meets a boy who’s run away from home. Enola soon realizes the boy’s family is trying to murder him, and so despite trying to keep her nose out of it, she has to figure out what’s really going on. This sub-plot seems like it will take a back seat to the main mystery of mom’s disappearance, but after a while it just takes over as the main plot. This happened to the point where the plot was wrapping up, and it seemed like the movie was about to be over, and I realized “oh, that’s right, she still hasn’t found her mom.” But then we do get some answers, and it isn’t satisfying in the least. I definitely thought that one of the movie’s biggest weaknesses was its messy story and lack of any real satisfying mystery.

The other big problem I have with the movie is that it panders…a lot. I really wish just once we could get a female empowerment movie with a strong female lead where the writers don’t feel the need to belittle men in the process. As you’d expect, Enola is the type of girl who “doesn’t know how to embroider” and instead is just a strong independent woman that doesn’t need no man. She makes many comments about how oppressed she is as a woman and how she wants to break free from the roles that have been prescribed for her. Along with this, she regularly describes the boy that she meets as “useless,” and the writers intentionally make him so incompetent so that Enola has to save him throughout the movie. I also recall a specific scene where Sherlock is called out for not being interested in politics because he “has no interest in changing a world that already suits him,” again driving home the message that we live in an oppressive patriarchy full of evil men. Along with this, they really villainized Mycroft in this movie, and I have no idea why. He’s just a complete asshole with no redeeming qualities, and so I think his character could have been handled a lot better. I’m just really tired of these sorts of messages being shoehorned into every movie with a female lead, and it really dragged down the experience for me with this one.

However, there are definitely things I really liked about Enola Holmes, too, and what kept it from just being a bad movie. First of all, I found the overall style to be really refreshing. Enola regularly breaks the fourth wall throughout the movie and talks to the audience, and this is something I feel like we just don’t see in many movies these days. I think the movie is really well directed, and so the overall experience of the movie was well-crafted. It’s quirky and fun in all of the right ways, and so it’s hard not to be entertained despite its flaws.

The big saving grace here, though, is Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Enola. Almost everyone out there who’s familiar with Millie knows her from her role as Eleven on Stranger Things, and she’s really proven herself as a great actress on that show. Enola Holmes allows her to take on a completely different role from the one we’re all familiar with for her, and the result is fantastic. She’s really the reason I was interested in seeing this movie to begin with, and after seeing it I have to say she’s easily the best reason to watch it. She’s incredibly charismatic and owns this role. I think that without Millie this would have been a really bad movie, but she managed to redeem a lot of its flaws through her performance alone. I also briefly want to shout out Henry Cavill (known for his role as Superman in all of the recent DC movies), who plays Sherlock Holmes here and is way better than I could have imagined him being in the role. If Netflix wanted to greenlight a spin-off movie (kind of odd to consider a Sherlock movie a spin-off, eh?) centered around his character, I would absolutely love to see him in the role again.

In the end, Enola Holmes is a movie with mixed results. It has a messy plot and some annoying feminist messages shoved into it, but it’s also a really fun adventure led by an amazing actress. So, the end result for me was mostly frustration. Usually if I give a movie an average score, it’s because I felt lukewarm towards it, but with Enola Holmes it’s because I both vehemently liked and disliked certain aspects of it. As the movie started out I thought it was fantastic, but as it went on it kept declining for me, until I got to the end and was kind of glad it was over. I’m not mad that I watched it, so I think it still might be worth checking out if you’re interested in it, but I do just caution everyone to know what they’re getting into.

3/5