Joel on Film

The films following Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister—which must now be referred to as a franchise, one supposes—have always been as good as they are because of a clockwork sense of fun and intrigue. That continues into Enola Holmes 3, a slightly less effective installment but, because of those traits it remembers, still pretty enjoyable on its own. Here, the scrappy young detective of the title, played by Millie Bobby Brown, finds herself in the middle of a case that hits quite close to home—the kidnapping of her brother (Henry Cavill), the famed detective himself.

It arrives at a time of great personal insecurity for Enola, who is set to marry her beloved Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), the young man she rescued from an assassination attempt in the first film and who is primed for an eventual life in politics and the aristocracy. Enola, still filled with the youthfulness that defines Brown’s performance (complete with the constant breaking of the fourth wall to address the audience), feels unsure that she’s cut out to be a lady in the semi-royal sense of the term. It matters little, though, when an old colleague arrives bearing news of Sherlock’s disappearance.

The name of the colleague is Dr. John Watson (Himesh Patel), who was introduced during the postcredits sequence of the last movie (because that’s the way of things with movie franchises these days), and the name of the culprit won’t be much of a surprise either. In the tradition of stories about Sherlock Holmes, Watson is a mainstay. Another character is, too, though, of the villainous variety, and while that’s not exactly unexpected, how the character arrives and appears might very well be.

For a little while, that doesn’t even really matter, because for Enola, the here-and-now matters most—specifically, why anyone would want or be able to kidnap the entirely capable Sherlock or, for that matter, Tewkesbury’s mother (played by Hattie Morahan), who disappears in the middle of an arson that might have served a purpose greater than the setting of flames. It all might relate to the location of hidden treasure, or perhaps it’s far more personal for the Holmes family (with Helena Bonham Carter also returning as the siblings’ mother Eudoria to remind us from where these two get their spunk). This is fun stuff, obviously, because Sherlock and especially Enola are such winning characters as penned by Jack Thorne (working again from the book series by Nancy Springer).

The structure here is the same as before, which is to say that Enola observes the pieces of the puzzle (including a clever bit about how the location of the wedding, on the island country of Malta, is a key clue, making the location shooting strategic and not solely for the purposes of seeing the Maltese backdrops), credibly places them into a jigsaw in order to arrive at the final picture and, of course, leaps into an action-filled climax to save the day. She really is an all-in-one sort of character, appealing because she’s not relegated to the type of passive or reactive role lesser hands might have given her. This time, she has a bit of a foil in the person of Watson, but he’s played by Patel as compassionate and intelligent in a distinctive and always interesting way.

Some of the film’s shortcomings do arrive as slightly obvious, such as how Thorne and director Philip Barantini (new to the series) seem forced to split Enola and Sherlock—and, therefore, Brown and Cavill—for the majority of the story, following a pair of movies that concisely defined their sibling relationship. The second film, especially, had them working together on a case that benefitted from the dual and dueling perspectives of detection. It’s possible that the filmmakers could only use Cavill for so long during the film’s production, but whatever the case, the movie does lose a little something in the process.

We gain it back, for the most part, in the sense of momentum within the movie’s mystery, which twists a couple times rather nicely before coming to rest in the identity of that most familiar menace (which is really not a spoiler, since the last movie basically told us whom to expect at this finish line). Enola Holmes 3 might be a little more obvious than its predecessors, but the future of this young franchise is still promising.

Rating: *** (out of ****)