Enola Holmes 2 (2022, Harry Bradbeer)

Enola Holmes 2 runs a long two hours and nine minutes, but the movie actually leaves a bunch on the table. For example, antagonist David Thewlis has history with both Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mama Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter), seemingly separately, but the film never gets into it. Thewlis is phoning it in, gloriously biting off scenery in giant chunks; he can do this part—and well—effortlessly, which is good because director Bradbeer’s not great with actors.

Everyone in Holmes 2 is solid, however. Millie Bobby Brown is a fine lead, except whenever Bradbeer doesn’t know what to do, he has her wink at the camera or break the fourth wall. It’s cute—but for the first and most of the second act, Brown could just be narrating the adventure straight. She opens the film narrating, and there’s always something; why not just go all the way?

Cavill’s effortlessly charming and more than willing to make room for his younger costars, to the point he’s just taking up space. He’s constantly around in this one like they wanted to make him work for the sequel bucks, but they don’t give him anything to do. The film reveals a bunch about Enola Holmes universe versions of Sherlock Holmes mainstays, but mostly just as gags or Easter eggs. It’s awkward world-building.

Louis Partridge is also back as Brown’s love interest, a young lord trying to fight the good fight against the blue blood stuffed shirts. Partridge never really gets anything to do in the movie. He takes a while to show up, then is sort of around, but also not. He’s perfectly good, and he and Brown get some fine teamwork moments, along with romantic ones, but he should’ve been in the movie more. Or less.

Just like Bonham Carter and Susan Wokoma. Wokoma shows up out of nowhere in the late second act like she wasn’t going to be in the movie, but then they needed a combination action and heist sequence, so suddenly Cavill brings her in. Except when she shows up next, it’s with Bonham Carter, and Cavill’s detached from that whole sequence. It’s like the supporting cast is tagging in and out. Got to keep them around, even if they won’t have anything to do until—presumably—Enola Holmes 3D.

The film kicks off with an affable but uninformative recap of the first film. Netflix is assuming you’re binging both pictures. Since the first movie, Brown has gone into business for herself but not seen Partridge, Cavill, or Bonham Carter much. She’s going it alone. And she’s going out of business, right up until adorable street urchin Serrana Su-Ling Bliss shows up at her door looking for her missing sister. Bliss and her friends are matchstick girls, and it certainly seems possible they’ve stumbled into the rich British people killing poor ones for profit.

Ah, capitalism.

It ends up being a semi-true story, which screenwriter Jack Thorne (with story co-credit to director Bradbeer) does an atrocious job integrating. Too many important things in Holmes seem shoe-horned in, with Bradbeer assuming Brown making a joke or Cavill grinning will cover. The film’s a case study in charm only getting you so far.

Decent, thankless supporting turn from Adele Akhtar as Enola Universe Lestrade, and an excellent bit performance from Sharon Duncan-Brewster as another unappreciated Victorian woman. Hopefully, they’ll bring Duncan-Brewster back too.

If Enola 2 had been twenty minutes shorter, it probably would be more successful. The mystery investigation goes on about ten minutes too long. But then it also needs another twenty minutes in the first act, probably. Thorne and Bradbeer don’t flop, but they need more substance for the cast. Not everyone can chaw sets like Thewlis.

The Big Sick (2017, Michael Showalter)

The Big Sick is the true story of lead and co-writer Kumail Nanjiani and his wife, also co-writer Emily V. Gordon. Nanjiani plays himself in Sick because it’s a star vehicle explicitly for him. Gordon doesn’t appear. Zoe Kazan plays her. Gordon co-writing the film adds a couple of extra layers to the film; the most obvious is how much of a Nanjiani vehicle it’s supposed to be, and the second is how it portrays the couples’ parents.

While the actual events of Sick took place in 2007, the film came out ten years later with the latest in laptop and mobile phone technologies. The visual voicemail scene isn’t true! But it also makes the anti-Brown person racism Nanjiani experiences different than it would’ve been ten years earlier. The always hilarious (not kidding, every one is a winner) 9/11 gags would play so much differently earlier. Big Sick did not forecast the future very well with white male bigots either.

Anyway.

The film starts with Nanjiani as a burgeoning stand-up comic. The film’s never clear who’s supposed to be the funniest on stage, making it a little like a Godzilla movie where there’s no rhyme or reason to why the supporting kaiju can beat up the other supporting kaiju. He’s not supposed to be the funniest, but he’s definitely the funniest. And then some of the people who are supposed to be funny aren’t?

He regularly goes to dinner at his parents’ house, and they’re devout Pakistani Muslims. Well, devout, but there’s swearing. Anupam Kher plays the dad, Zenobia Shroff plays the mom. Shroff’s an overbearing Muslim mom who’s just trying to get Nanjiani to go to law school and marry a Pakistani girl. She brings them over to dinner to audition; Nanjiani keeps all their headshots in a cigar box. Kher’s bit is he thinks he’s cooler than his sons.

They’re not going to ever get anything. Kher at least doesn’t get a cold diss; Shroff gets a cold diss.

However, as the white parents, Holly Hunter and Ray Romano get best supporting bait. Hunter’s fantastic, especially as she and Nanjiani bond. Romano’s excellent, too; it’s simultaneously more impressive than Hunter (because of course she can do this part) while not technically being better. Good thing they wouldn’t be competing for the same nomination.

So, one night in the club, Kazan heckles Nanjiani, and when he sees her at the bar later, he picks her up. She’s a manic pixie dream girl who goes to the University of Chicago for a therapy master’s; she can keep up with Nanjiani’s constant comedian barbs, just like his pals (even better than his doofus roommate, Kurt Braunohler, who’s never as funny as the film thinks). After what she intended to be a one-night stand, they start dating.

Only Nanjiani doesn’t tell his family about her and doesn’t tell her about his family. He definitely doesn’t tell Kazan how mom Shroff wouldn’t stand for him dating a white girl and how he’s actively in the arranged marriage market.

Once Kazan finds out, she ends the relationship, leading to Nanjiani using what he’s learned picking her up to use on other comedy club patrons. Meanwhile, Kazan gets a mystery illness, and eventually, Nanjiani comes up on the phone list for potential support staff. When he gets to the hospital, Kazan crashes, and Nanjiani has to falsify a medical release to allow her intubation. It saves her life, so I guess there are no repercussions.

He calls Hunter and Romano to come into town from North Carolina (they’re apparently North Carolina liberals). After realizing they know how the relationship ended, Nanjiani eventually bonds with Hunter and Romano through a shared intense experience. Lots of great scenes for the three of them, easily the best written in the film.

Does Gordon wake up? Does Nanjiani’s “House M.D.” impression save the day? Oddly, it might, but the film entirely glosses over it.

The third act’s a mess, with Nanjiani making big life decisions and everything related to them playing out off-screen. The film’s got a problem with presenting time passing (odd, since Nanjiani has strict time-based dating rules to juggle white girls and disapproving family), and there’s not anywhere near enough character development on the supporting cast. Given the film’s got two extremely well-paced acts, first with Nanjiani and Kazan, second with Nanjiani, Hunter, and Romano, it’s even more disappointing when the third fumbles.

There’s a nothing subplot about Nanjiani’s one-person show about growing up Pakistani, which ought to be important but isn’t. Though, given Kazan’s not important either, nor are Shroff and Kher, so it going nowhere is par for the course.

Then the end credits post-script reveal the real story—for Kazan (and Gordon), anyway—came after the movie’s events. And then, when you see the actual timeline, it’s even worse.

As a vehicle for Nanjiani, The Big Sick’s perfect. Ditto as Oscar bait for Holly Hunter and Roy Romano. But it’s just a disaffected male redemption movie.

And Showalter’s direction is exceptionally pedestrian. The film’s technically competent and all, but it’s a good thing it’s got a well-written, talky script; otherwise, there’d be nothing doing.