My quick rating - 5.5/10. I admit. I did enjoy the first two Enola Holmes films. Rounded both of them up to a 7/10 even. They were smart, witty, and just plain fun. So I went into Enola Holmes 3 expecting another entertaining mystery caper.
This time, detective Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) heads to Malta, where her plans to marry Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) fall apart when Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) goes missing.
It opens with a hooded woman being marched through a prison and dropped in front of some dude who offers her freedom if she can recover some stolen goods. Insert the dramatic music as he asks if the name Tewkesbury means anything to her.
Apparently it does, because the movie smash cuts to...one year later...at a wedding.
Enola wastes no time breaking the fourth wall before giving us a quick refresher on the first two movies and explaining how we ended up in Malta. Then, just as expected, we're knee-deep in another mystery that initially seems impossibly complicated. These movies always make the case look like it requires seventeen corkboards, three maps, and enough red string to knit a sweater before everything starts falling into place.
It was great to have Helena Bonham Carter as the mother of Enola once again. Since everybody else was returning to the screen, it was just natural that Himesh Patel would come back as Dr. Watson too.
One scene had me laughing for all the wrong reasons. A box with what looked like twenty-five gold bars gets treated like something Enola can just pick up and carry away. That's roughly 675 pounds of gold. Unless Sherlock has secretly been training her as Britain's strongest woman between movies, that wasn't happening.
Unfortunately, this one never reaches the heights of its predecessors.
There's less action, less adventure, and fewer moments where we get to sleuth alongside Enola. Even the romance, which should've been the touching part, is pretty damn dull. Instead of another globe-trotting mystery, it feels a lot more like a stage production. Just too many long conversations replacing the energetic pacing that made the first two so enjoyable.
The mystery itself is also far more predictable. I found myself figuring things out well before the film wanted me to, which takes a lot of the fun out of a detective story.
I don't think the change in directors to Philip Barantini is really the issue. He's proven he can direct excellent material. The bigger problem is the screenplay. Jack Thorne, who wrote the first two, doesn't deliver the same sharp dialogue, clever twists, or sense of adventure this time around.
It's still an easy watch thanks to the returning cast and Millie Bobby Brown's endlessly likeable performance. But compared to the first two outings, this is definitely the weakest case Enola has taken on so far.
Not a bad sequel. Just one that's missing the spark that made the others so much fun.
https://jackmeat.com/enola-holmes-3-2026/
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