Millie Bobby Brown of 'Stranger Things' fame delivers a charming performance as the plucky titular character of 'Enola Holmes.' The bright, breezy Netflix film is a pleasure to disappear into.
, which is based on a series of YA novels by Nancy Springer, benefits hugely from Brown's lively, intelligent and charming performance. She's so good here that even the character's tendency to turn to the camera and address the audience — which she does a great deal — never gets wearying. You even start to find yourself looking forward to them, if you can imagine.
The plot: Enola awakens on her 16th birthday to discover that her mother — an eccentric but brilliant thinker and suffragist — is missing. Following clues involving anagrams and cyphers, she sets off to London to find her, all while attempting to evade her older brothers Mycroft and Sherlock , who are seeking to cart Enola off to a finishing school.
Do I need to tell you that the dour, prim head of the finishing school in question is played by Fiona Shaw? Or that Burn Gorman shows up as a villainous thug, forever lurking in doorways? I don't, right? You guessed all that right away, yes? The script is witty, the cast slightly more diverse than you're likely expecting, and there are fun references to canonical Holmes elements throughout. True, this is a lighter and frothier take on Victorian England than we're used to seeing, though it does flirt with some darker themes involving the mother's fate that threaten to throw off the film's tonal balance.
And I'm honestly puzzled by Cavill's performance as Sherlock here, which, while it may comport with the books' portrayal, feels wildly out-of-step with past interpretations of Arthur Conan Doyle's hero. O.G. Sherlock is, after all, cold, shrewd, impatient and famously tetchy. Cavill, in stark contrast, is ridiculously warm and empathetic, even tender; the ultimate effect feels less like a radical re-interpretation and more like a clumsy mis-interpretation.
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