I really wanted to love this movie.
I'm the father of a 10-year old girl, and I firmly believe that we need more cool, smart, brave young female leads in movies, so that smart, cool, brave girls like my daughter has someone to look up to.
So I was looking forward to seeing a clever young girl solving a difficult puzzle in a movie with subtle references to the old Holmes-stories.
I did not get that at all.
The premise of this story is that the mother of Enola, Sherlock and Mycroft disappears and leaves behind clues to where she is hiding.
Apparantly, Henry Cavill's Sherlock can't be bothered to solve this rather simple paint-by-numbers case, so Enola steps in, but before the case really kicks off, our lead character meets a young viscount on the run, and the story turns into a YA love story instead.
Apart from the lack of a good puzzle, the main problem with the movie is that it talks down to its audience. Instead of just showing us some strong female characters (and there are a lot of them in this movie, so that's great) it insists on constantly telling us that "the world is changing" and "you can choose your own path in life". These not-so-subtle messages are sometimes even narrated directly to the viewer by the main character.
The old saying "don't tell it, show it" doesn't seem to be something the film makers have ever heard of.
I'm the father of a 10-year old girl, and I firmly believe that we need more cool, smart, brave young female leads in movies, so that smart, cool, brave girls like my daughter has someone to look up to.
So I was looking forward to seeing a clever young girl solving a difficult puzzle in a movie with subtle references to the old Holmes-stories.
I did not get that at all.
The premise of this story is that the mother of Enola, Sherlock and Mycroft disappears and leaves behind clues to where she is hiding.
Apparantly, Henry Cavill's Sherlock can't be bothered to solve this rather simple paint-by-numbers case, so Enola steps in, but before the case really kicks off, our lead character meets a young viscount on the run, and the story turns into a YA love story instead.
Apart from the lack of a good puzzle, the main problem with the movie is that it talks down to its audience. Instead of just showing us some strong female characters (and there are a lot of them in this movie, so that's great) it insists on constantly telling us that "the world is changing" and "you can choose your own path in life". These not-so-subtle messages are sometimes even narrated directly to the viewer by the main character.
The old saying "don't tell it, show it" doesn't seem to be something the film makers have ever heard of.