Today marks the release of Enola Holmes, an intriguing new movie on Netflix. Based on Nancy Springer's novel series The Enola Holmes Mysteries, it centres around Sherlock Holmes' younger sister, Enola, portrayed in this instance by Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown.
On the morning of Enola's 16th birthday, she awakens to discover that her mother - played by Helena Bonham Carter - has disappeared. She ends up in the care of her brothers, Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), before escaping and trying to solve the mystery of what happened mammy.
The cast is impressive, the concept sounds great but is it any good? Here's what the reviews have been saying.
Variety: A clever Netflix original
Peter Debruge of Variety.com describes Enola as "an independent-minded new heroine for young-adult audiences in this entertaining franchise starter." He adds:
“Enola Holmes” remains tamer and more tasteful in its high-energy storytelling than Guy Ritchie’s recent “Sherlock Holmes” movies, and considerably more fun than last year’s “Nancy Drew” reboot.
Read the full review here.
Slate: The latest attempt to insert a female protagonist into the series
Slate.com's Laura Miller has an interesting piece, broadening her discussion about Enola Holmes into a review of previous attempts to include female characters and feminist themes in the Sherlock Holmes series. In terms of this movie, she's not blown away:
Enola Holmes is sweet and stylish but also entirely predictable, right down to the many exhortations to defy convention coming from such inspirational figures as Enola’s mother and her suffragette friends.
You can read her full piece here.
The Guardian: An amiable, starry mystery movie
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw describes it as an "amiable" mystery movie, giving it three stars out of five. He also has praise for Millie Bobby Brown's performance in the lead role:
Brown has a nice, easygoing way with the material, cheekily outpacing her famous brother Sherlock here and there and often doing fourth-wall breaks to smirk at the audience.
Check out his full review here.
NPR: A pleasure to disappear into
Glen Weldon of npr.com is another who enjoyed the movie. While he expresses some misgivings about Henry Cavill's portrayal of Sherlock, he's hoping this is the first of many movies in the series.
The script is witty, the cast slightly more diverse than you're likely expecting, and there are fun references to canonical Holmes elements throughout.
Read the full review here.
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In terms of aggregate scores, Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer currently sits at an impressive 91%, indicating a huge percentage of positive reviews. It's worth noting that the Tomatometer is an indicator for how many of the reviews are positive, rather than the movie getting an average rating of 9/10 etc.
On metacritic.com the average critic score to date is 63, while the average user review driven score for the movie is 6.7/10 on IMDB.com. Overall, Enola Holmes appears an enjoyable, light-hearted, easy-on-the-brain movie. Perhaps the very thing we all need these days.
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