Delayed Reaction: Enola Holmes 2

Premise: Enola finds another mystery to solve.

I don't remember the first Enola Holmes super well. I recall that it was fun. Mostly, it convinced me that Millie Bobby Brown had star potential beyond Stranger Things. It fit in that subgenre of anachronist, askew takes on classic literature or stories. Rosaline on Hulu is another good example of this. So, I had no reason to skip the Enola Holmes sequel.

 

For the most part, the movie delivers what it promises. Brown slides through the film of movie star charisma. The stellar older cast of Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, and David Thewlis happily defer to and prop up Brown. The mystery itself is entertaining enough turn of the century fiction.

 

It does suffer some from the Netflix style of these teen movies. I often comment on Netflix teen movies how they start like we're three episodes into a TV series the rest of the audience has already seen. The familiarity is more implied than I'm expecting. It was there in the first Enola Holmes as well, but in that case, I actually was familiar with the backstory (the Sherlock Holmes story). The flashbacks and 4th wall screen addresses were there to link the known stories with this one. However, I've also noticed with these Netflix sequels, the tone is that the audience remembers the previous film intimately; not like someone who watched the original and never thought about it again. That led to more things like the 4th wall breaking being used for callbacks rather than as a clever narrative tool.

In other words, Enola Holmes plays like it was designed for me to enjoy it even though I wasn't the target audience. Enola Holmes 2 plays much more like it was only concerned with the teens watching it. That's fine. Not everything had to be made with me in mind. It does mean that I'm more likely to come away underwhelmed. Which is what happened. Still entertaining enough though.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend