The question isn’t “Why is ‘Enola Holmes 3’ pretty bad?” The question is “Why did I like the first two?”
----
The three films are pretty similar. That might be your first reason right there. The same schtick done three times will eventually wear thin, even if it’s a good schtick. There’s a mystery, Enola (played by the no longer precocious because she’s too old Millie Bobby Brown) gets involved, she uses her martial and parkour skills to navigate some action scenes, has some witty quips that frequently belittle the dimwitted men around her, and randomly breaks the fourth wall, both by talking to the audience, and by doing this move where she will come to some startling realization and turn to the camera and stare straight down the pipe (by the third film, it’s actually pretty annoying). It asks the question, if she’s aware that there’s an audience, and she’s therefore the heroine of her own story, why is she dicking around England solving mysteries when she should be trying to manifest her godlike powers? Because she talks to us directly, she should be asking us questions like “Is this communication only one way? Why? Are you god? Am I god? Are we both god? Why does my brother look hotter than anybody in this time period should ever look?”, instead of giving us exposition dumps about what happened earlier in the movie.
By the way, movies, y’all need to chill with this ‘second screen’ nonsense. Scenes that force a damn recap of the movie-to-this-point in order to catch up viewers who weren’t paying attention because they were busy messing with their phones... Those scenes need to GO, and they’re only becoming more common. Hear this now and believe it later (or now): People who miss vital information because they were looking at their phones DON’T DESERVE THE INFORMATION. Let them figure it out! Don’t waste 3-5 minutes for the people who actually WERE paying attention. Not to mention, this is “Enola Holmes 3”, not “Stalker”. There IS no vital information!!! There’s Enola. She’s doing stuff. That’s what you need to know!
So yeah, all that stuff on repeat gets a little stale by the third film by default. But... That stuff is basically still watchable. I think my dislike of “Enola Holmes 3” ultimately boils down to what it’s trying to sell me.
“Enola Holmes 1” basically was trying to sell us on the idea that a girl could be a hero detective in victorian england. You know... Girl power. It’s not a hard sell, I basically bought that stock way back when I was watching “Yes Madam” or “In the Line of Duty 1” and “In the Line of Duty 4” in the early nineties, long before hollywood would catch up and figure out girls could be action stars or detectives or basically bust out of the “mirror through which we can examine the plight of our male characters” role that they were all too relegated to, during hollywood’s first 100 years. As a result, movies trying to sell me on a girlboss archetype don’t need a convincing pitch. I’m not saying they’re all good movies, but “Enola Holmes 1” sold it well enough. She was pretty funny, a decent fighter, and an overall fun watch.
“Enola Holmes 2” was selling the idea that workers are exploited, and that they suffer terrible working conditions, even to the point of death, so that a very few greedy/evil financial entrepreneurs can make a huge profit, and this is a fundamentally unjust state of affairs. Ummm... Okay, Enola Holmes... You’re selling me a Marxist historical lens? I’ll take two, please! By the way... Can we PLEASE give it up for a dude that both performed the incredible “Right Here Waiting” AND came up with a class-based lens through which to view history? The man had many talents! The point is... You don’t have to sell me on exploitation as a crime, I’m already there. What’s a little surprising... is that a lot of people aren’t? I would think that, of all the self-evident truths that are out there (well... As much as anything is true. You can check out my review of “Orwell 2 + 2 = 5” for more on this topic), “Rich people are assholes who take advantage of poor people” would be pretty high on the list. But it isn’t. Our culture still, for the most part, venerates rich people and tells us they’re great. Therefore, I’ll always welcome a movie like “Enola Holmes 2” that shines a light on this very problem.
So... What is “Enola Holmes 3” selling us? Well, on the surface, it’s selling the idea that “Colonialism is bad”. Great. I’m not going to disagree. But... Neither is anybody else. These aren’t the days of Harry Truman, where taking over other countries made you a man or whatever. Wars of conquest are pretty much frowned upon by most everybody. Sure, every now and then some dimbulb will suggest conquering Greenland or some such nonsense, but for the most part, we as the blob of humanity bought anti-colonialism wholesale soon after the second world war ended. So... Like... It’s a waste of a sales pitch. Not everybody has bought into the girlboss idea, and certainly only a few people have bought into capital as exploitation or “Hazard” as an underrated song, so I’m kind of down with what the first two movies were selling. But anti-colonialism... No thanks. However... It turns out anti-colonialism isn’t really what “Enola Holmes 3” is trying to sell.
It’s trying to sell marriage.
Now... I will be the first to admit... While it’s still going strong, marriage is starting to slip a bit. It should be slipping A LOT, considering that it was invented right around the same time as agriculture, where a bunch of dudes were like “Hey... We can grow these crops and store them... And turn them into equity! We can do the same with our women!” and marriage was born, and has remained omnipresent for the last 12000 years. However, around the globe, we’re starting to see marriage rates decline (along with childbirth rates). There are a bunch of reasons for this, and I won’t get into all of them, but the absurd expense of raising children and the fact that we now have an internet that gives you *other stuff to do* other than get married and have kids are certainly factors.
So marriage very much wants a saleswoman, and they got it in the form of Enola Holmes. You see, she’s engaged to this dude, and at the beginning of the movie she skips out on her wedding, because she’s like “Why would I want to leave my awesome job as a detective in order to be a wife?” Plus, her brother gets kidnapped and gives her a less philosophical reason... But she was having doubts even before she gets the news about Sherlock (the aforementioned “hottest man in England”, played by Henry Cavil, who is regrettably absent for much of the movie because he’s been kidnapped). By the end of the film, she’s realized that she can do BOTH. She can be an awesome detective and run around solving mysteries AND be a wife, because, you know, love! Win-win-win!
It’s a load of trash. It reminds me of a television commercial in rotation a few years back. I don’t even remember what they were advertising, but the hero of the commercial is this woman, and she’s at her job at the hospital, then she’s in spin class, then she’s picking up dinner for her family, and she walks in the door and her dumbass husband and daughters are dancing around the house. This is presented as a triumph of the modern age: The woman who can have and do it all! Are you kidding me? You want to present THIS reality as positive? I’m sorry, but if I’m working, then working out, then getting dinner AS WELL, and I come up to my husband dancing around while I was busting my ass all day? At the minimum, I am fucking my way through a bunch of my co-workers. There’s no way I’m spinning for hours and keeping it tight for a dancing blowhard who couldn’t even bother to get dinner. The illusion of the “have it all!” woman is ludicrous. Like... If you want it all... The marriage, the job, the having to do all the stuff for your family... I’m not here to tell you’re wrong, but... It seems unreasonably hard. Don’t let movies like “Enola Holmes 3”, that try to sell you on the idea that the “modern woman” has to be 10000 things successfully... Don’t let those movies taint your idea of what “success” even looks like, and certainly don’t ever buy the nonsense that, if you DON’T get married, run a successful business, AND be an awesome mom that you’re somehow a failure, because you’re NOT. You’re just being sold a vision of success that isn’t real.
That’s what ultimately makes me upset about “Enola Holmes 3”. Not the action scenes, which are similar to the action scenes from the first two films, but edited much more poorly. Not the tired fourth wall breaking. Not the second screen recap nonsense. It’s trying to sell you a product that, often, will just make you feel bad about yourself, wrapped in a movie that is pretending to do the exact opposite. I’m not buying it.
I’m also not buying the villain. If there’s something I dislike about “Enola Holmes 3” almost as much as the terrible sales pitch, it’s Moriarty. As I frequently do, I’m going to spoil the end of the movie, but I have to bring up the speech. I thought the 5 minute word salad delivered by the bad guy at the end of “The Wrecking Crew” earlier this year was one of the worst “Before I kill you, Mr. Bond” I’d ever heard, but it was topped by Moriarty.
Moriarty has a gun pointed at Enola Holmes’s head, and instead of just pulling the trigger and offing her arch-rival, she delivers this speech (I am paraphrasing, but this is basically what she says):
“I can outsmart your dumbass brother every day of the week and twice on sunday. But you... Enola Holmes. You are the most incredible person on earth. Your intellect dwarfs even my own. The fact is, I CANNOT reconcile the fact that I have defeated you with the fact that you are this awesome. Therefore, rather than be wrong about your awesomeness, I’ll just lay down and lose.” And then she lets herself be sucker punched in the face and goes down. Like... What? You’ve just completely neutered your villain! If Moriarty believes Enola Holmes is the undefeatable pinnacle of earthlings, how can Moriarty be a threat anymore? She can’t! She’s utterly pointless!
Well, unless you were on the phone and missed her speech. Then, the only pointless thing, is basically the entire movie.
9/10