Henry Cavill is Sher-locked into Netflix’s Enola Holmes
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So she gives them the slip one day, and hops aboard the first train to London, leaving Sherlock to wryly admire her spunk, and Mycroft to menacingly twirl his moustache. On her journey, she runs into another runaway, and together, the two bond over their abandonment issues and uncover a political conspiracy that could change the course of England’s history.
On occasions, Enola Holmes certainly has a tendency to come across as a piece of fan fiction, which is technically what the source novels by Nancy Springer were. And if you consider the fact that the film has been written by Jack Thorne, the man behind glorified Harry Potter fan-fic the Cursed Child, you begin to notice parallels.
Along with director Harry Bradbeer (who helmed all but one episode of Fleabag), Thorne brings the sort of earnest innocence to Enola that reminded me of the first Harry Potter film — it was always going to spawn sequels, but not at the expense of giving fans a good time.
Thorne’s screenplays often have certain rote qualities, but I mean this as a compliment — to me, he’s simply relying on proven storytelling techniques.
While millennials made do with Benedict Cumberbatch’s considerably more conspiratorial Sherlock — a brilliant series that captured an entire generation’s fears and anxieties and projected them onto one of the most celebrated fictional characters of all time — Enola Holmes, like the teenagers towards whom it is targeted, is more hopeful for the future.
Set in a smoggy, muddy Victorian London, the film has the spirit of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as if it were written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Enola Holmes begins with the titular heroine, played by the very endearing Millie Bobby Brown, breaking the fourth wall, à la Fleabag.
She does this on numerous occasions in the film, most memorably when she disguises herself as a widow (because people are uncomfortable around death, and therefore less likely to be suspicious of her) and declares, proud of her own ingenuity, “‘Tis I!”Enola is intelligent, but never insufferable; she’s confident, but not completely immune to self-doubt. She’s a fully realised person. And that’s all down to the writing, and Millie Bobby Brown’s performance.
The young actor seems to have secured a franchise for herself, which will serve her well when Stranger Things ends. And much like Enola, it’s an opportunity that she created for herself. Brown is making her debut as a producer on the project, which is just wonderful.
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