Producers: Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Ali Mendes, Millie Bobby Brown, Robert Brown, Michael Dreyer and Jack Thorne Director: Philip Barantini Screenplay: Jack Thorne Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Louis Partridge, Himesh Patel, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Hattie Morahan, Jason Watkins, Joe Azzopardi, Robbie O’Neill, Susan Wokoma and Nicolette Yardley-Moore Distributor: Netflix
Grade: C
The third time is not the charm for the Netflix series of adventures featuring Sherlock Holmes’s younger sister. The first two Enola Holmes features, loosely based by scripter Jack Thorne on Nancy Springer’s YA books, were brisk, amusing, and fairly cleverly plotted. This newest one, which was also written by Thorne but features a new director in Philip Barantini, has a rather dull plot and is too busy trying to disguise the fact with all sorts of visual gimmicks.
As the story begins, encumbered by giddy graphics, hyperkinetic cuts, zooming tracking shots and extensive flashbacks, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) is in Malta for her marriage to Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Patridge). But on the morning of the big day, she’s keeping the wedding party waiting and wondering, debating whether to go through with the ceremony. She eventually decides that love will overcome any problems to her detective work, but while rushing to the church she learns from a frazzled Dr. Watson (Himesh Patel) that her brother, who’s had serious doubts about the marriage, has been kidnapped. Finding him takes precedence, and Tewkesbury goes along with a postponement, especially after his widowed mother (Hattie Morahan) is also abducted.
The screenplay has already subverted much surprise by showing a woman (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) being sprung from prison in a prologue; she turns out to be the villain of the piece. Whatever suspense remains revolves around whether Enola can unravel the purpose behind the kidnapping of her brother and mother-in-law-to-be, as well as the motive behind a couple of murders—of a British army colonel (Robbie O’Neill) and a suspicious noblewoman (Nicolette Yardley-Moore)—that take place early on in her investigation, in which Tewkesbury, Watson and Corporal Mikiel Mizzi (Joe Azzopardi), an agitator for Maltese independence, play helpful roles.
The presence of Mizzi among the characters points toward the ultimate solution of the mystery, which, in a faddish nod to modern sensibilities, is related to British colonialism, tracing back to acts of imperialistic greed that implicate both Tewkesbury’s dead father, a military hero, and his friend Brigadier Sampson (Jason Watkins), the governor of Malta and Tewkesbury’s godfather. Predictably, the wrongs perpetrated by the wicked colonialists will be rectified in the end. (It’s a complete turnabout from the old Basil Rathbone Holmes pictures, which always extolled the greatness of the Empire.)
Enola’s discovery of all this depends, however, not so much on her deductive brilliance but her deciphering of Sherlock’s encrypted notebooks, in which much of the rationale behind the plot is already laid out, as well as Tewkesbury’s childhood recollections, which provide an important key. All of which makes the villainess’ reason for luring Enola into investigating things in the first place come across as feeble and implausible.
Nonetheless Thorne’s screenplay does allow for many strategically placed, exuberantly choreographed action sequences as well as sweet romantic interludes between Enola and Tewkesbury, played by the ingratiating Partridge, as well as appealing returns by Susan Wokoma, as Enola’s old teacher, and especially Helena Bonham Carter, who can be guaranteed to energize any scene in which she shows up as Enola’s wild-eyed mother, including the closing one in which the wedding finally comes off.
Unfortunately, Sherlock emerges as a dull fellow whose presence is used merely to accentuate his sister’s exceptional talents; it doesn’t help that he’s played by Cavill, whose lack of charisma has never been more evident. By contrast Duncan-Brewster chews the scenery to the hilt as the supposed genius behind all the trouble, whose name all will recognize, despite the pseudonym she chooses to employ for reasons made clear in a postscript. The rest of the cast is okay, though Watkins and O’Neill are made ridiculous by the prodigious mustaches the makers apparently thought were obligatory for nineteenth-century British officers.
As for Brown, she’s spunky as all get-out, which frankly grows tiresome after a while. Her turn is also undercut by the overemployment of the device in which Enola breaks the fourth way to address viewers directly, a practice that can be amusing if used sparingly but grows increasingly irritating if resorted to too often, as it is here. The cascade of blazingly colorful graphics punctuating the narrative at regular intervals likewise takes a toll on the exhaustingly energetic editing by Tommy Boulding.
Otherwise, the movie has a bright, sometimes garish look, marked by lovely Maltese locations, an elaborate production design by Gary Williamson, sumptuous costumes by Consolata Boyle and glossy cinematography by Matthew Lewis. The score by Aaron May and David Ridley is wildly enthusiastic.
The first two installments in this series showed a decline in enjoyment, and this third one continues that unfortunate trend. Let’s hope it can be reversed if the franchise continues.