Enola Holmes may have had a few bumps and pitfalls in her first case. But she made it through. And she showed that women can be just as respectable as men when it comes to gathering clues and solving mysteries.
After all, this is 1884! Women can do anything a man can! Even with dresses and heels. And so, Enola decides to prove her splendidly reasonable point by opening her own detective agency.
Take that, world!
Problem is … the world is dreadfully slow to take notice. Most often, if anyone wanders into Enola’s office, they either think she is the receptionist or they’re looking for the sweets shop or the tailor.
Nobody is looking for a young female detective.
But then, just as Enola is packing her cases to close up shop, a girl comes in, hoping that Enola can help her find her missing sister. She only has a copper or two to her name … but that doesn’t matter to intrepid Enola. This is a case!
Miss Holmes immediately sets off to the young girl’s squalid room, where she and her sister, Sarah, lived together. She quickly deduces that the girls work nearby as laborers in a match factory. A fact that the young girl, Bessie, eagerly acknowledges.
From there Enola examines Sarah’s bed, gathering strands of her long, red hair. She looks in the woman’s dresser drawer, looks closely at her notes, make up, keep sakes.
Any tiny detail might lead to the next step, and the next. And before you know it, some clues—such as the fact that the comely redhead had a second job and a potential suitor—become clear. (Why, Enola might well wrap this up in mere hours!)
However, as Enola begins looking at the match factory and beyond, she has no idea that the mystery behind Sarah’s disappearance is far deeper and far more complicated than it appears. In fact, she would soon learn that it was slightly entangled with her brother Sherlock Holmes’ current case on the other side of the city.
Embezzlement; bank theft; political corruption; unscrupulous disregard of women; and even outright murder are all threads woven together in this plot. And Enola Holmes, young sister of the famous detective, Sherlock, is about to yank on the first thread.
What has she gotten herself tangled up in?
Sherlock readily steps up to aid his sister once he realizes that his young ward may have gotten in a bit over her head. But with time they work together. And Enola pieces together clues … almost as well as Sherlock. Sherlock praises her ingenuity and skills of observation.
That said, Sherlock also realizes that his lonely existence as a man consumed by thought and mystery isn’t necessarily a good one for his sister to emulate. “I know you’re not a fan of unnecessary advice,” Sherlock tells Enola. “But please … don’t turn into me.”
As the mystery begins to unfold, a number of people step up to help others in need. And many do so self-sacrificially. In that vein, Enola’s mother, Eudoria, encourages Enola to seek out the help of others and to rely on trusting relationships. “You can do well on your own,” Eudora tells her. “But with others you could be magnificent.”
Enola and another woman take steps to save the lives of scores of women in danger. And with help, they achieve their goal.
One piece of evidence is a hand-printed sheet of music titled “The Truth of the Gods.”
While on the run, Enola encounters a young boy who exchanges clothes with her. The camera watches him as he approvingly smiles at himself while wearing her dress. Elsewhere, Enola wears a gown at a ball that is low cut. And a number of other women wear cleavage-baring outfits as well.
Enola and Tewkesbury confess their mutual love. They kiss. It’s suggested that women at balls can send flirtatious, sensual messages to men with nothing more than a wave of their fans. Enola sees that suggestion put into practice.
It’s suspected that the disease typhus is infecting and killing a group of workers. But Enola begins to suspect that their illness may be caused by something more devious. We see people infected with a face-swelling malady. And it’s revealed that indeed, a number of people were poisoned for the sake of greater profit.
There are two people killed in the course of the story. One is a young woman who is stabbed. Enola discovers her with a knife in her stomach and works to stop the blood flow as she bleeds out. Another dead body is found later with a stab wound and a cutlass slash on the person’s neck.
A man is hooked in the crotch by a large hook and rope. He’s hoisted up to the rafters of a building where he slams his head and then falls from height to the floor below. Men fire pistols and a cane-like rifle at others. Some men fight with swords. Someone gets shot in the shoulder. And during a prolonged fight, men and women are left bleeding from their mouths, temples and ears after repeated blows.
Eudora tosses smoke bombs and pyrotechnics from time to time. She also plants an explosive in a mailbox during a semi-terrorist protest. She also tosses smoke bombs at police and detonates a large explosive near a group of fallen men.
Police surround a group of women, including Enola and her mom, and physically fight them. They hit and punch one another in the torso and face.
Enola kicks a man in the crotch. She’s also manhandled by a couple different men. She’s grabbed by the throat, struck to the ground, flipped over a man’s back, slammed into a wall and hit by a heavy metal object. Enola and her mother’s wagon gets run off the road and smashed. Enola also slides down a slick slate roof and almost falls several stories before being helped. She hits a man with a hammer.
A man grabs a young girl (who’s perhaps 10-years-old) and pulls at her roughly, holding a knife to her throat.
We hear one or two uses each of “h—” and “bloody,” as well as one exclamation of “Good God!”
Patrons drink beer at a local theater hall. Sherlock gets quite drunk while working a case. Enola stumbles upon him and helps him home, where he crumples into a chair and passes out. People are poisoned with a chemical substance.
Enola jokes about passing gas. Highly placed officials temporarily seem to get away with high crimes.
OK, let’s get this out of the way at the top: Enola Holmes 2 comes off a bit too contemporary and focused on cultural issues for its own Victorian Era sensibilities at times. And unlike the Enola Holmes books, this version of Sherlock’s sister seems less serious minded, while her detective brother is far less melancholy.
But hey, does any of that really matter?
Maybe to a Holmesian purist.
But from the perspective of an average tween and young teen audience, though, all that really matters are the inclusion of a few corseted dresses, some top hats and long coats, and a well stitched-together mystery. And this nicely tailored sequel has all that in spades.
Enola Holmes 2 is a well-paced adventure. It also packs in plenty of enjoyable scenes involving Enola and her famously observant brother examining clues closely and deducing their way through conundrums side-by-side. Hey, there’s even a dash of Lord Tewkesbury romance in the mix.
It works.
It’s fun.
And it updates a lot of those stuffy, old-fashioned suppositions that women couldn’t give as good as they got in a back-alley brawl.
Of course, I must also note that those brawling bits are also the perilous parts where some might blanche a little. Enola’s mom tossing bombs around on behalf of women’s rights is one thing. But young women being manhandled, grabbed by the throat and pummeled to the ground is quite another. It might all be expected action-movie fodder these top-hat-free days. But it can still feel a little harsh.
But those moments, for the most part, are but bumps in the chase-things-down-with-a-horse-carriage road. And they likely won’t spoil the detective girl fun for the young audience this pic is aimed at.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
