Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Starring: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Louis Partridge

Streaming on: Netflix

To watch or not to watch: An average movie which loses its track with runtime

Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) has been brought up single-handedly by her mother Eudoria Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter) who is a feminist and quite talented in word plays, hand-to-hand combat, etc. Enola adores her mother and learnt a lot from her. On Enola’s 16th birthday, Eudoria disappears from their home and their town, leaving only breadcrumbs for Enola to follow. She lists the help of her two elder brothers, Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft to find Eudoria. They in turn want Enola to be a proper lady according to the day and age they lived in. Enola runs away from home and directly into the path of another absconding teenager Tewksbury (Louis Partridge) and enters London to look for her mother. Follows a series of shocking stories, often putting Enola’s life in danger.

The movie is directed by Harry Bradbeer, who also directed the wildly popular (and deservedly so) Fleabag. He has incorporated breaking the fourth-wall in the movie too, which was so seamlessly done in Fleabag, though he isn’t able to carry it off throughout the movie. The fourth wall merely cracks a little in the first half hour of the movie and then stays the same way for the rest of the run time. This theme of inconsistency is seen throughout the movie – Enola not so much as solves the crime, as she is blindly thrown into it, quite literally. The movie pays a homage to the women’s liberalization movement on the late 19th century, but frankly that concept is overused these days. And trying to please the PC police, they have cast a woman of colour who runs a teashop and also teaches jujitsu which not era appropriate (the teashop bit, not the jujitsu one).

There can be no fault found with Millie Bobby Brown’s performance, she has really showed the wide spectrum of roles she can do from Eleven to Enola. Henry Cavill is cool as cucumber in his role. Though his and Helena Bonham Carter’s characters seem to be done a disservice, in not been used to their full potential. It is an easily missed movie, as it doesn’t add much fun to the watching experience. Being more than 2 hour long, it drags at times. It also doesn’t justify the plot points bring dropped at quite a few places. All in all, pretty meh.