(courtesy IMP Awards)
In an age where everything feels more than a little serious and there’s nothing, it seems at least, but doom and freaking gloom, then we should all give thanks for franchise such as a Enola Holmes which, on its third sprightly outing, proves there’s great diversionary and delightful power in simply letting rips with escapist silliness.
The rather dully named Enola Holmes 3 – surely they could’ve run with a breathlessly jaunty subtitle like “The Maltese Marriage Curse” or “Kidnappings, and Chapels and Big Bads Oh My!”; okay clearly this is not where my impromptu writing strengths lie – may not have quite the narrative cleverness of the first two films in Netflix’s Sherlock-ian franchise but what it lacks in a clear, substantial plot, it makes up for with an energy that simply, and rather happily, carries you along with it.
In fact, so full of vim and vigour of the streaming cinematic kind is it that you don’t even contemplate 10-second-ing the film at any point, an almost irresistible impulse no matter how much you’re enjoying the film because, well, it’s there, and you’re content to let Millie Bobby Brown as the titular Enora Eudoria Holmes, younger sister of Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill), simply go and have some capital “F” fun!
The actor is in fine, fourth-wall-breaking form, taking on a new case, with trademark gusto, which involves a mystery of a rather personal nature – the kidnapping of her brother who is in Malta, along with many others Enora knows (and being a high English society wedding, doesn’t know but must be seen with), for her wedding to the rather dashing Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) who has yet to find a 19th century suit in which he does not look ridiculously attractive.
What should be a reasonable straightforward society wedding is cruelled by the fact that (a) Enola is having serious cold feet about giving up her name, freedom and being straightjacketed by the very society forces she, and her orthodoxy-eschewing mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), have always sought to subvert and (b) the fact that on her belated way to the wedding she finds herself intercepted by Sherlock’s assistant Dr. Wtason (Himesh Patel) who announces to Enola that her brother has been kidnapped from his room.
While other more “proper” characters might consider getting married first and sleuthing second, Enola, her wedding dress all caked in dirt and her veil trampled underfoot by horses in the dried-out countryside of British-occupied Malta, is not one to shy away from a mystery and especially one which calls upon to prioritise, as she always will, her loyalty to her quirky but weirdly loving family.
So barely has Enola Holmes 3 begun than its eponymous heroine is off in pursuit of whoever kidnapped her brother, one other key character, set fire to a hotel and generally leads her on a merry search across Valetta and some rather captivating Maltese coastal scenery and ruins.
Slight and muddled though the story might be at times with the movie lacking form coherence and a solid narrative throughline beyond the immediately obvious (who’s the Big Bad? Guess and you are likely right), what carries Enola Holmes 3 along with a fiercely fun and unrelentingly energetic momentum is Brown who treats each and every scene with a buoyant sense of thrilling discovery and adventuring gusto.
As she puts the admittedly obvious pieces together like they are part of some impenetrable puzzle piece, helped by Watson, her fugitive mother and a sense that she will not rest until justice is served and her brother and one other is freed, Enola Holmes 3 fires on all kinds of vivaciously fun cylinders, carrying you along with it with a barely a thought of how threadbare some of it is.
If we’re being honest, those plot holes and contrivances matter not one jot because what Enola Holmes offers in instalment, and which has always been one of its core strengths, is the thrill of the chase, and while it might be over the top at times, that is all part of its considerably escapist charm.
It feels in many ways like the choose-your-own adventures many of us read as kids, and while we don’t have much choice in which dots are connected and when and where, we are granted the nostalgia fizz of being part of an adventure which rides rather merrily on rather traditional good versus evil storytelling, with black and white elements writ large, including a rather half-hearted but points for trying dig at colonial misdeeds and societal overreach and amorality.
A learned piece on the sins of British colonialism Enola Holmes 3 is not, but good on it for sort of trying; no, the real interest here is watching as Enola once again takes on the expectations and orthodoxies of the establishment and comes out looking like the ahead-of-her-time spirited feminist that she most certainly is.
A happy ever-after ending is all but guaranteed in the Enola Holmes franchise, and you certainly get that in Enola Holmes 3 but not before the Big Bad of the piece, played with cartoonish villain bravura by Sharon Duncan-Brewster, has led everyone on a boldly merry chase and cause all kinds of marriage-upsetting chaos, the kind which is rectified but not before we have had our fill of determined sleuthing, red herrings and success of the happy adventuring kind.
We are not to be denied a sense of justice served and authentic selves upheld (in an age where that was not even really a luxury for those with the means to make it happen; and likely most definitively not for them) with Enola Holmes 3 doing what the franchise does best which is to celebrate its titular character as a defier of the established order, a self-possessed and brilliantly capable detective of the highest order who bests the Big Bad, gets her own way matrimonially and upsets a very staid Victorian apple cart, and does it all with fierce determination, unstoppable bravery and the kind of fun that makes you feel as if there’s some goddy enjoyment to be had in the world yet.
Enola Holmes 3 streams on Netflix.