Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

PG-13 and that's mostly for action violence.  I suppose that people die and children are exploited, but I don't necessarily know what makes this movie skip from PG to PG-13.  It's not even that I am arguing against the PG-13 rating as having a hard time determining what makes it so.  My kids watched it with only minor terror.  

DIRECTOR:  Harry Bradbeer

What is it that makes me like the same things differently at different times?  I remember fairly disappointed with the first Enola Holmes story.  It was that righteous anger that accompanies the feeling of being able to do something better than the filmmakers could.  But that might be unfair.  Again, I criticize myself as being a blogger that writes about movies simply for therapy.  But the first movie got me quite irate versus this movie, which is a lot of the same stuff happening, that I mostly approve of.

It's not that Enola Holmes 2 is great.  It isn't. It's fun and I'll go as far as to say that it's pretty good.  But what makes me question myself when I write with Holmes 2 is the fact that I liked that that lowered the stakes.  The movie almost goes out of its way to stress that the stakes are miniscule in this movie.  With a quick bout of exposition, the eponymous Enola tells us that she had opened and then quickly closed her detective agency.  I don't think the movie ever makes the broad claim that solving this mystery would keep the business afloat.  If anything, the movie is about Enola's sense of self-worth.  If I was to take that to a natural step further, I would add on to the concept of self-worth of "her self-worth in a patriarchal society."  That's what Enola Holmes is about.  Enola can do what Sherlock does, but without being toxic about it.  But with the business already closed, the film creates a sense of morality around what Enola is doing.  

There's a fine line between Enola and Sherlock Holmes that can get a bit blurry.  Both Enola and Sherlock aren't bound by detecting.  They do so because they show a natural inclination for it.  It is somewhat easy for them, despite the fact that we watch both characters flounder for answers at times.  (There needs to be a story, so the characters must have moments of frustration.) But Sherlock, being male and emotionally stunted, detects because it defines him.  He enjoys the success, albeit he claims not to care about it.  His cockiness is one of his virtuous traits.  There's a gag where Sherlock borderline stares down cops who get in his way.  But that's something that Enola doesn't really have in her arsenal.  Everything is uphill for Enola because she is a girl.  The movie may take a few more liberties than I would like interchanging Enola's gender with her age.  After all, I too would be nervous to hire a high school aged girl to solve important crimes, especially crimes that may land her in trouble like the story ultimately does.  

But Sherlock has devolved to a place where he doesn't view the cases in terms of morality / right and wrong.  It's a game for him.  The fact that the term, "The game is afoot" stresses his cavalier attitude to people's plights.  And yet, Sherlock's cases tend to be far larger than Enola's.  It's only though coincidence that Enola's and Sherlock's cases merged into being the same case.  From Enola's perspective, she's simply solving a missing person's case that is linked to a poor match girl.  But Sherlock and his case are about reputation as the world's greatest detective (not Batman, in this case).  When Sherlock is stymied by the puzzle that Moriarty has presented, it is because he is never stumped that frustrated.  It's what causes him to turn inwards, setting up the potential joining of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.  But Enola is a different beast entirely.  When she is recruited by the match girl, Enola has no reason to actually say yes to the case shy of empathy. This isn't a case that will bring her fame or notoriety.  Enola is aware that the job won't pay anything and her life won't be any better.  Because it is a movie, the stakes are raised.  But this isn't a story that ties to her mother, a driving factor from the first movie.

And I like that.  Mom is back, in her own way.  I'll never really understand why Mom acts the way she does, outside of the fact that it drives the story in a weirder way than most stories go.  But the first film tried attaching some very personal stakes to something completely arbitrary.  By removing any personal quest items here, Enola Holmes 2 sets itself up to be the template that Sherlock Holmes stories have been enjoying for years while giving us a character to actually care about.  Great detective stories don't necessarily live or die on the notion of how great the mystery was.  (I suppose that can be debated.)  We care about Sherlock Holmes both for the reveal, but also for the big personality behind the detective.  Enola Holmes, however, with her ability to break the fourth wall and the universal nature to her quirky personality, makes her far more interesting than Holmes. Perhaps, to a certain extent, she is a dime a dozen, but Sherlock has always been aloof.  Yeah, I love what Moffett did with the character on his show and this Henry Cavill version is pretty likable.  But there's always a wall between Sherlock Holmes and all other characters.  Not only does that wall not exist for Enola, but she chooses to break a fourth wall that other characters hold sacred.

The Moriarty reveal is fun, but I also don't think that it is enough.  Sherlock Holmes always feels the need to bring in Moriarty as a story element.  I don't blame them for bringing in Moriarty.  It is the franchise's Joker.  For every superhero, you need an even better supervillain.  But I also feel there's a bit of adding checkmarks to your story.  Enola Holmes and its sequel tried to make Victorian England more inclusive and I love it.  But when you relegate your Black female character to the cool-but-often-unseen villain of your piece, is that really such a triumph?  The clear third entry in the series will have white Sherlock Holmes and white Enola Holmes tracking down Black female Moriarty.  I know that it is hard to go back in time and change things.  But if the franchise was really gutsy, we'd have Black Sherlock Holmes and Black Enola Holmes.  To a certain extent, Doctor Who delivered that with the Paternoster Gang.  But I can't give Moffett too much credit for that because he, too, has a mostly white cast for the main characters.  

The more I think about it, the mystery in Enola 2 is take it or leave it.  I solved a lot of the elements pretty early (and that's me bragging because I found a way to shoehorn that in).  It's not the puzzle is easy or challenging.  it's just that I don't really think that all of the pieces necessarily fit together as cleanly as some of Arthur Conan Doyle's original detective mysteries would.  There are rough edges in the puzzle here that are done for shock value, but make little sense in the reality of the world of Sherlock and Enola Holmes.  That's kind of why I am going off on the characterization.  I like Sherlock and Enola Holmes in this movie.  They have a great rapport which makes the movie worth watching.  Yeah, it's style over substance, but I ultimately don't really care.  It's a fun movie.