2020 was a dark year in so many ways. COVID was still a largely mysterious disease, a lot of places were closed, and I for one didn’t want to go out anyway. But there were a few bright spots in the world of entertainment, perhaps most notably the Netflix movie Enola Holmes, the story of Sherlock Holmes’s brilliant younger sister, setting out and solving a mystery on her own while trying to stay one step ahead of both of her brothers, one of whom (Mycroft) wants to ship her off to boarding school. Charming lead actress, fun story, and appropriate for all ages.
And hey, now there’s a sequel. Can they get something as fun and charming as the original?
Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) has her own detective agency in the city of London, and after successfully not only solving the first movie’s case but also more or less becoming an emancipated young woman, she has one real problem: no clients. She’s being overshadowed by her more famous brother Sherlock (Henry Cavil), and she wants to be known as her own person. But between his fame and her age and gender, she’s not getting much. So, naturally, when a very young girl employed at a match company comes by hoping Enola can find her missing older sister, Enola jumps at the chance. Sherlock may not take a case like this after all, and the papers keep reporting that he’s been uncharacteristically stymied by some case he’s currently working on anyway. Really, Enola thinks he should have a flatmate by now or something.
However, this case is about more than a simple missing person. Before too long, there are a couple bodies and a very nasty police inspector (David Twelis) who would like nothing more than to send Enola of all people away for murder. Even with help from returning friend and possible love interest Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), Enola might need to pull out all the stops here, remembering lessons from her eccentric mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) and even perhaps getting a bit of an assist from her big brother Sherlock. Or perhaps she’ll help him. Both seem to have advice for the other about how it’s bad to be solitary, but that doesn’t mean either will actually take it. Or will they? Eh, go see the movie. It was charming as hell just like the first one.
Yeah, really, there was little if any drop-off in quality going from the first movie to the second. Yes, the freshness of a new character is gone, but Brown is still a very game lead here, breaking the fourth wall, misunderstanding the proper role of someone in a position of society, and even helping out in a historic moment that made things better for poor working class girls of her era. This one, perhaps moreso than the first, touches a bit more on the Sherlock Holmes mythos, but never in a way that overwhelms the audience. This isn’t the Benedict Cumberbatch series where they toss off Easter Eggs to all kinds of Arthur Conan Doyle stories at the drop of a hat. No, this just touches on the basics, and it even finds a way to play with the audience’s knowledge of who various Holmes associates are to offer a nice surprise in the final act.
If anything, this one put Brown and Cavil into more scenes together. Cavil’s Sherlock is maybe a little eccentric but not exactly the cold figure that the character is often depicted as. One underlying theme to the movie seems to be that both Enola and Sherlock may need people in their lives, and though Sherlock more than once offers Enola a professional partnership, she has other ideas and would rather not be overshadowed by her more famous brother. But ultimately, the Holmes family is always there to help each other out of a jam, and that’s nice. They just have a very unique way of doing so, and if Netflix wants to make a couple more of these, they’ll have absolutely no complaints from me.
Grade: A-
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